This article introduces evolutionary psychology to a general readership, with the purpose of applying evolutionary psychology to suicide terrorism. Some of the key concepts related to evolutionary psychology are discussed, as well as several misconceptions associated with this approach to psychology. We argue that one of the primary, but insufficient, motivating factors for suicide terrorism is strong religious belief. Evolutionary psychological theories related to religious belief, and supporting empirical work, are described, laying a foundation for examining suicide terrorism. Several promising (...) directions for future research on suicide terrorism from an evolutionary psychological perspective are highlighted, particularly within the theoretical framework of kin selection, and the implications of applying evolutionary psychology to suicide terrorism are discussed. (shrink)

This paper reviews development research and policies on freshwater fish in South and Southeast Asia. We conduct a systematic review of academic literature from three major science-based policy institutions to analyze development research and policies that have accompanied the ongoing transition from freshwater capture fisheries to aquaculture in the region. Using a ‘food fish system’ framework allows for the identification and systematic comparison of assumptions underpinning dominant development policies. We analyze the interrelations between the production, provisioning, and consumption of wild (...) and farmed fish and demonstrate a shift toward food fish systems thinking in the sampled literature. We discuss gaps and weaknesses in the literature, as identified through the application of the food fish systems framework and present an agenda for future research aimed at securing the potential of fish as food. (shrink)

The need for urgent, structural transformations to dominant food systems is increasingly recognized in research and policy. The direction these transformations take is in great part influenced by how the problem is framed and what future pathways become seen as plausible and desirable. Scientific knowledge and the organizations producing it hold considerable authority in suggesting what alternatives are or are not worth pursuing, ultimately shaping frames and in turn being shaped by them. This paper examines Brazil’s federal Agricultural Research Corporation (...) (Embrapa), a major contributor to technological advances that made Brazil into an agricultural powerhouse. We examine the ways in which Embrapa’s leadership has framed sustainable agriculture in its public communication and the wider implications for food systems transformation. Drawing from Embrapa news articles in the period 2015–2020, we identify four interrelated frames forming Embrapa’s prevalent position on sustainability. Our results show that while Embrapa promotes practices based on alternative approaches such as agroecology, its deeper framing often reflects the core assumptions driving dominant industrial food systems. This framing reinforces underlying logics of control, efficiency, and competition aligned with the productivist paradigm and excludes divergent perspectives that exist within the organization. (shrink)

In August 2001,just after President Bush announced his stem cell funding policy and the creation of a new Presidents Council on Bioethics PCB), the new chair of the PCB, Leon Kass, set out his philosophy for constructing public bioethics bodies: There are several ways of running commissions, he said. One is to stack it with your people, make them homogenous, and force a consensus. Another is to make them heterogeneous, so that you can only come to the lowest common (...) denominator. We re not going to adopt either. We are going to allow the debate to be developed and heard. Now, three years, sixteen meetings, and five reports later, there are nagging questions about whether this council indeed has allowed the debate to be developed and heard. And the charge of politicizing public bioethics to a degree heretofore unknown and stifling the voices of dissenting members comes not from the political left but from President Bushs own appointees, including one scientist who was dismissed from further service. (shrink)

In this article I investigate a neglected form of radical skepticism that questions whether any of our logical, mathematical and other seemingly self-evident beliefs count as knowledge. ‘A priori skepticism,’ as I will call it, challenges our ability to know any of the following sorts of propositions: (1.1) The sum of two and three is five. (1.2) Whatever is square is rectangular. (1.3) Whatever is red is colored. (1.4) No surface can be uniformly red and uniformly blue at the same (...) time. (1.5) If ‘if p then q’ is true and ‘p’ is true, then ‘q’ is true. (1.6) No statement can be both true and false at the same time and in the same respect. (1.7) If A is taller than B, and B is taller than C, then A is taller than C. (1.8) Everything is identical to itself. (1.9) If the conclusion of an inductive argument is contingent, it is possible for the premises of that argument to be true and its conclusion to be false. (1.10) George W. Bush could have been a plumber. (1.11) George W. Bush could not have been a prime number. (1.12) ‘2 + 3 = 5’ is necessarily true. (shrink)

I’m to push back on Hill’s (2022) criticism in four ways. First: we need some context for the debate that occurred in the pages of the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective that so concerns Hill. Second: getting precise with our terminology (and not working with stereotypes) is the only theoretically fruitful way to approach the problem of conspiracy theories. Third: I address Hill’s claim there is no evidence George W. Bush or Tony Blair accused their critics, during the (...) build-up the invasion of Iraq in 2003ACE, as being “conspiracy theorists.” Fourth (and finally): I will gently suggest that Hill has succumbed to a stereotypical view of work in Philosophy on conspiracy theories. (shrink)

The war in Iraq has reignited the passionate humanitarian intervention debate. President George W. Bush surprised many observers in his second inaugural address when he promised to oppose tyranny and oppression, and this in a world not always willing or ready to join in that fight. Humanitarian intervention is again on the forefront of world politics.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Rhetoric of RHETORIC: The Quest for Effective CommunicationCarolyn R. MillerThe Rhetoric of RHETORIC: The Quest for Effective Communication. Wayne C. BoothMalden, Mass: Blackwell, 2004. Pp. xvi + 206. $20.95, paperback.By using the traditional word rhetoric I want to suggest a whole philosophy of how men succeed or fail in discovering together, in discourse, new levels of truth (or at least agreement) that neither side suspected before.—Wayne C. (...) Booth, 1974Listening-Rhetoric is what I most long to celebrate and practice—the kind that is sadly rare.... Here both sides join in a trusting dispute, determined to listen to the opponent's arguments, while persuading the opponent to listen in exchange.... Both sides are pursuing not just victory but a new reality, a new agreement about what is real.—Wayne C. Booth, 2004By the evidence of these two quotations, the late Wayne Booth sustained a passionate interest in a constructivist, cooperative rhetoric for at least thirty years. His 1974 Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent first sounds many of the themes that are rearticulated in his 2004 The Rhetoric of RHETORIC, a volume in the Blackwell Manifestos series. Both books were motivated by evident failures of public discourse, the earlier one by those emanating from the Vietnam War, including student protests at the University of Chicago, and the recent one by multiple rhetorical sins of the Bush administration and the national media, especially those concerning the war in Iraq. Indeed, Booth confesses here that his distress dates at least to 1963, when he lamented that "the debate about the [Kennedy] assassination [may be] a greater national disgrace than the assassination itself" (109).What animates Booth in both books is the conviction not that only we can do better in conducting our discursive relationships as a nation, as institutions, as families, but that we must do so. We must do so because our ability to live and progress together depends on our talking rather than resorting to force and on our talking in a way that engenders trust and enables continued debate, rather than provoking mistrust and disrespect. The two enemies he has always in sight are violence and deception. These are two forms of rhetorical failure, but the two become entangled when "violence and the threat of violence corrupt rhetoric," particularly during times of war (118), and when corrupt rhetoric itself becomes a kind of violence (48). [End Page 261]As a "manifesto" addressed to a non-specialist audience, The Rhetoric of RHETORIC is relatively brief, engagingly written, and passionately argued. It includes chapters on definitions of rhetoric (good and bad), the history of rhetorical studies, the difficulties of judging rhetoric (i.e., the disjunction between instrumental and ethical effectiveness), the dispersal of rhetoric to multiple disciplines and forums, the condition of rhetorical education today, the dangers of bad rhetoric in politics and in the media, and a demonstration of how our many intractable debates might be improved with "listening-rhetoric," using as a case example the "warfare" between science and religion. Throughout, Booth dramatizes his ideal of listening-rhetoric by engaging in frequent proleptic questioning and refutation as well as reflexive commentary.Anyone who heard Booth talk at a conference within the past decade or more has first-hand knowledge of his predilection for neologism, and he indulged himself in this book (though he resisted in 1974; see Modern Dogma, 11n5). His term for bad rhetoric, the rhetoric that exacerbates misunderstanding or seeks victory through deception, is "rhetrickery"; his term for the best rhetoric, a kind of critical consciousness that seeks to find common ground and to remove misunderstanding, is "rhetorology." We are also introduced to LR (listening-rhetoric), WR (win-rhetoric), BR (bargain-rhetoric), Rhet-Ed (rhetorical education), P-Rhet (political rhetoric), and MR (media rhetoric).Rhetorology, or listening-rhetoric, is Booth's solution to our rhetorical woes, a solution that admittedly has both philosophical and practical limitations. Rhetorology opposes rhetrickery and some versions of win-rhetoric. He is at some pains to explain and sequester these damaging capabilities so that the unsavory aspects of rhetoric's reputation do not obscure its positive potential. Readers familiar with recent rhetorical theorizing... (shrink)

The contributors to this volume argue that whilst there is a commonplace superstition conspiracy theories are examples of bad beliefs (and that the kind of people who believe conspiracy theories are typically irrational), many conspiracy theories are rational to believe: the members of the Dewey Commission were right to say that the Moscow Trials of the 1930s were a sham; Woodward and Bernstein were correct to think that Nixon was complicit in the conspiracy to deny any wrongdoing in the Watergate (...) Hotel break in; and if we either accept the terrorist events of 9/11 were committed by Al-Qaeda, or that the Bush Administration was responsible, then it seems we are endorsing some theory about a conspiracy to commit an act of terror on American soil. As such, there is no reason to reject conspiracy theories sui generis. This volume challenges the prima facie that conspiracy theories are irrational beliefs, arguing that we should treat conspiracy theories and the phenomena of conspiracy theories seriously. It presents fresh perspectives from the wider philosophical, sociological and psychological community on what is becoming an issue of increasing relevance in our time. (shrink)

The efficiency of engineering applied to civilian projects sometimes threatens to run away with the social agenda, but in military applications, engineering often adds a devastating sleekness to the inevitable destruction of life. The relative crudeness of terrorism (e.g., 9/11) leaves a stark after-image, which belies the comparative insignificance of random (as opposed to orchestrated) belligerence. Just as engineering dwarfs the bricolage of vernacular design—moving us past the appreciation of brush-strokes, so to speak—the scale of engineered destruction makes it difficult (...) to focus on the charred remains of individual lives. Engineers need to guard against the inappropriate military subsumption of their effort. Fortunately, the ethics of warfare has been an ongoing topic of discussion for millennia. This paper will examine the university core class I’ve developed (The Moral Dimensions of Technology) to meet accreditation requirements in engineering ethics, and the discussion with engineering and non-engineering students focused by the life of electrical engineer Vannevar Bush, with selected readings in moral philosophy from the Dao de Jing, Lao Tze, Cicero, Aurelius Augustinus, Kant, Annette Baier, Peter Singer, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, and Judith Thomson. (shrink)

Neither the historical tradition of American constitutionalism nor those who have theorized about it have promoted political or theoretical designs hospitable to the valorization or promotion of democratic virtue. This article illustrates this point by canvassing practical interpretations of the American constitution, from the document of 1787–1791 to Bush v. Gore, and theoretical interpretations from Madison to Rawls, Dworkin, Ackerman, Elster, Holmes, and other contemporary theorists of liberal constitutionalism and natural law. Exposing these roadblocks to the theory and practice (...) of democratic virtue in America, it argues, provides a critical corrective to current debates about the relationship between constitutionalism and democracy. (shrink)

In a critical discussion, interlocutors can strategically maneuver by shading their expressed degree of standpoint commitment for rhetorical effect. When is such strategic shading reasonable, and when does it cross the line and risk fallacious derailment of the discussion? Analysis of President George W. Bush’s 2002–2003 prewar commentary on Iraq provides an occasion to explore this question and revisit Douglas Ehninger’s distinction between argumentation as coercive correction and argumentation as a person-risking enterprise. Points of overlap between Ehninger’s account and (...) pragma-dialectical argumentation theory suggest avenues for harmonization of rhetorical and dialectical perspectives on argumentation. Out of this conceptual convergence comes theoretical resources for understanding strategic maneuvering, by accounting for ways that discussants exploit gaps between their externalized and actual discussion attitude. As such higher-order strategic maneuvering played a major role in the 2003 Iraq prewar discourse failure, perspicacious understanding of this particular argumentative maneuver carries practical, as well as theoretical import. (shrink)

The Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights enforces Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. OCR works through complaint investigations and compliance reviews, as well as outreach, technical assistance, and public education to promote voluntary compliance. In the Olmstead decision of June 1999, the Supreme Court held that the ADA’s “integration regulation” requires state and local government to administer services, programs, and activities in the most integrated setting (...) appropriate to the needs of qualified individuals with disabilities. The decision changed the focus from whether a right to more integrated services exists, to under what circumstances and how services will be provided. The New Freedom Initiative announced by President Bush in February 2001 is a broadbased initiative to remove barriers to community living for people with disabilities and promote swift implementation of the Olmstead decision. (shrink)

New fresh herbs -- Falling leaves of the cherry -- The orange -- Forget-me-nots -- The Eulalia of Kareno -- Cockscomb -- Waves of wisteria leaves on the wind -- The lower branches of the bush clover -- Snow of blossoms -- Mountain sedge -- Kadsura Japonica -- Japanese yellow rose -- Broomrape -- Countless camellias.

Offers a detailed critique of the Bush administration's foreign policy, including arguments about the imposition of democracy on foreign nations and hypocritical actions by America.

In March 2003, President Bush declared the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the anticipated commencement of intensive American-led military operations in Iraq. With this declaration, the media began intense coverage of military operations from the field. For the first time, viewers were able to see images of actual events. This was due to three developments: the advancement of technology allowing immediate transmission of text and images, the actual presence of journalists identified as "embedded journalists" at military sites, and the (...) fierce competition among networks for viewers. One result of this constant coverage was significant pressure on decision makers within the television and cable news networks to decide within a matter of seconds which images to air. In particular, producers and broadcasters of competing networks experienced this pressure. Though the radio and broadcasting industry has a published code of standards, it is "general and advisory rather than specific and restrictive." Therefore, it did not address the unique time sensitive decision-making required within this new environment. Issues such as the security of soldiers, confidentiality of troop maneuvers, and the safety of the embedded journalists were critically important. Equally serious were the concerns about the impact of the immediate airing of information and violent images to the public. This research used Patrick Primeaux's ' mind-heart-sou¾ model of decision-making as its theoretical framework. The study investigated the gender and industry experience of selected professionals in a cable news network, MSNBC, to explore how ethical codes of behavior are integrated when people make decisions. Decision-making in both their professional and personal lives was examined. It is from this perspective that their professional decisions to air/not to air material from Operation Iraqi Freedom were studied. The findings on decisions about airing/not airing material from Operation Iraqi Freedom yielded both expected and unexpected results. There was no clear gender difference regarding ethical decision-making, but there was a difference when analyzed by industry experience. When the study focused on questions regarding the respondents' personal lives, the original hypothesis that there was a gender difference was validated. (shrink)

Gordon Mitchell mixes scholarship and polemics in a deliberate attempt to intevene “in present‐day missile defense controversies” . His book operates on three levels. First, he presents three case studies of recent missile defense activities in which the United States government has misled the American public. The failed promise of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars,” has lured countless industry representatives and government officials into rigging tests, falsifying results, and withholding information. The government used secrecy and intimidation, trying (...) to suppress the assertion of MIT professor Ted Postol that claims for the Patriot missile's success rate in the Gulf War vastly exceeded the evidence. Similar techniques were employed in the mid 1990s to discredit a study done by Postol and other colleagues suggesting that the government's proposed Theater High Altitude Air Defense might violate the Anti‐Ballistic Missile Treaty. Mitchell relies primarily on secondary sources to document these accounts; readers familiar with the issues will find little that is new in his treatment.The second level at which his book operates is more original. He subjects statements by government officials to rhetorical analysis. He hopes, thereby, both to reveal the misinformation and to create something of a taxonomy of dissimulation. He notes, for example, that President Reagan's rhetoric in proposing strategic defense was to equate it with disarmament. Volume 7 of the so‐called Fletcher report on ballistic missile defense revealed the system's vulnerability to countermeasures; the volume was withheld from publication. The Rumsfeld report, which purported to establish that rogue states posed a ballistic‐missile threat to the United States, was used instead to validate the claim that existing missile defense technology could work. When Ted Postol succeeded in demonstrating that a government‐sponsored rebuttal of the study he coauthored on THAAD was fatally flawed, the head of Ballistic Missile Defense, who sponsored the study, chose to represent the difference as a “healthy scholarly debate.” When the government is on the rhetorical offensive, it polarizes debate: to oppose Star Wars was to oppose disarmament. When the government is on the rhetorical defensive, it obfuscates: refutation of evidence is simply scholarly disagreement. In the end, Mitchell's exploration of rhetorical techniques provides some illuminating insights, though it does not seem to add up to a model that one might apply in other cases. Nor is it clear that these rhetorical strategies are anything more than ad hoc responses to the politics of the issue at hand.On the third level, epistemology, the inherent conflict between scholarship and polemics becomes manifest. Though Mitchell promises to focus on “the interpretation of controversy” , in practice he places “strategic deception at the center of attention” . He is less interested in locating “the stages of the dispute” than in demonstrating that the critics were right and the government was lying. Even his title, Strategic Deception, confuses his focus. This term usually refers to counterintelligence designed to deceive the enemy, not polemics designed to persuade the public. Most of the deceit he describes is ad hoc and banal; only the special claims of secrecy and national security distinguish it from the practices of other government agencies and programs. One can see most of them, for example, in the controversy surrounding the creation of energy policy within the current Bush administration.Those who do not know the details of his case studies will find this a useful, if somewhat wordy and redundant, introduction. Those who want to understand how government officials and contractors cross over the line from rhetorical flourish to abuse of power and blatant misrepresentation will be disappointed. The value that might have been added to this familiar material by a scholarly analysis is compromised by the polemics. (shrink)

The article examines the challenge of achieving sustainable mediational equilibrium within the Self–Other relationship. It argues that the mere pursuit of mutual understanding among dialogue participants is insufficient to guarantee productive communication, particularly in contexts where interactions are driven by competition for scarce resources and opportunities. Under such conditions, subjects risk becoming dependent on instrumental reason – the logic of control and suppression – which transforms both the Self and the Other from fully-fledged personalities into functions of reified rationality. The (...) analysis introduces a distinction between two roles of the individual: the person as a bearer of unique values and meanings, and the individual as a subject of social relations, an actor immersed in practical interactions. It is demonstrated that the capacity of the former to exert control over the latter is limited, and that interactions are shaped not only by the personal qualities of the participants but also by the impersonal logic of instrumental reason. This logic is conceptualized as a kind of third subjectivity that mediates the dialogue between the Self and the Other. Achieving mediational equilibrium becomes possible through the development of autonomy among the parties, through their transformation, mutual recognition, and the search for a measure of compatibility. This approach is traced through examples from A.S. Akhiezer’s theory of sociocultural mediation, A.P. Davydov’s concept of inter-subjective dialogue, and R. Bush and J. Folger’s theory of transformative mediation. Key concepts in the latter include empowerment (strengthening participants’ ability to clearly recognize their goals and make responsible decisions) and recognition (willingness to hear and understand the Other’s perspective). The essence of transformative mediation lies in the transition from imposing one party’s position to a collaborative search for new possibilities, allowing the realization of both Self and Other’s interests through dialogue. In conclusion, the article asserts the importance of overcoming the logic of mutual accusations by shifting the focus from the opponent’s personality to the impersonal structures limiting the self-determination of all parties. (shrink)

This piece, included in the drift special issue of continent. , was created as one step in a thread of inquiry. While each of the contributions to drift stand on their own, the project was an attempt to follow a line of theoretical inquiry as it passed through time and the postal service(s) from October 2012 until May 2013. This issue hosts two threads: between space & place and between intention & attention . The editors recommend that to experience the (...) drifiting thought that attention be paid to the contributions as they entered into conversation one after another. This particular piece is from the BETWEEN INTENTION & ATTENTION thread: Jeremy Fernando, Sitting in the Dock of the bay, watching... * R.H. Jackson, Reading Eyes * Gina Rae Foster, Nyctoleptic Nomadism: The Drift/Swerve of Knowing * Bronwyn Lay, Driftwood * Patricia Reed, Sentences on Drifitng * David Prater, drift: a way * * * * * Australia, Summer, 2012. …. essential humanity exists, and runs its course, within a system whose first principle is the preservation of balance. And arching over it all, is the logos of The Dreaming. How shall we state this when we fully understand it I do not know, but I should think we are more likely to ennoble it than not. Equilibrium ennobled is abidingness.” 1 On return to birthplace I write. Caught between jetlag and surprise, a relentless sun cracks my skin. Upright words fall under cockatoo roars. The attempt to settle, to be attentive, is shaken. Some kind of Dreaming surrounds and elements intrude without consent. Homeless at home. Exhausted, I fight sleep’s hard currents. Their victory would confuse the body clock, so the in-between wins. Half-there — half-awake — here in this place — I am driftwood. Driftwood: wood floating in or washed ashore by a body of water. A severed limb set adrift from the birthing body. Tossed from home it’s cast into processes of wind, water, sand, bacteria, decay and movement. Driftwood is orphaned members at the mercy and agency of weather, currents, submersion, and being thrown into dry world. Driftwood — singular plural. White man got no dreaming. Him go ‘nother way. White man, him go different Him got road belong himself. 2 photo: Bronwyn Lay The old man comes from the northern rivers. A while ago, he could no longer pay attention to wage slavery, so retreated north to be with dead redgum that lay abandoned in dry riverbeds. Derived from driftwood peoples tossed here by the sea, he followed the fragile river veins of his birth. He walked along water bodies and through country’s lungs. Some kind of displaced ancestral song compelled his leathered hands to pick up centuries old driftwood from flood plains. It emerged from under muddy creeks, was flung up by salt soaked coves, pushed underground by cracks in the claypan and lay embedded in mud and salinized soil. Smoothed and grooved in equal measure, the branches were marked by an organic alphabet that preceded him. As he held the wood, he touched decomposing circles that started with a blast and never ceased writing into abandoned flesh. When the ute was full the old man returned home having been away with the stuff that ‘growed him up’. His shed filled with red sawdust and the sound of tools at labour. His hands sculptured driftwood. History carved into itinerant skin. I sit opposite the old man. His body no longer holds the repetition of carpentry. He can no longer gift driftwood its detail. Outside redgum bits lie scattered around the fence line and beside the dam. He crouches over an unreliable computer researching the massacres of indigenous peoples that occurred along the same river veins that ‘growed him up’ long ago. Staring into the remnants of frontier resistance that he and I inherit, his eyes nurture fire. He discovers severed limbs and the slicing of tribes. In the ashes of sentences he sifts the lies that smoulder into our histories. In the 30’s the anthropologist Stanner said that due to certain factors — lack of change and isolation — the ideal and real come very close together in indigenous Dreaming. They are a people who were able to defeat history. 3 “If the Ideal and the Real drift too far away from one another (as they did at the end of the middle ages and seem increasingly to do this century) men face some difficult options. They have to change their way of life, or their philosophy, or both, or live unhappily somewhere in-between.” 4 Stanner says Indigenous Dreaming is blackfella thinking. 5 Dreamtime is not ethereal, not utopic, or otherworldly. It’s fused with the real and it’s not mine. I might never understand, but it’s the substance of my home. This here place ‘growed me up’. Is driftwood the unhappy in-between? Is it a radical itinerant written upon by currents? Where are we? The settler restless? photo: Alison Pouliot I return to the bush late one night, tired from high talk in city cafes, to find the old man at his computer. He’s either researching his white farming ancestors, or tracing unrecorded massacres of blackfellas. I laugh, “You know Dad, if you were indigenous you might go out by the dam and sing up your ancestors rather than try find them on a screen.” He peers over his glasses. His stare delivers an ancestral scold. He’s white man. Of course he archives. This is our way. One may see that, like all men, he is a metaphysician in being able to transcend himself. With the metaphysician goes a mood and spirit, which I can only call a mood or spirit of assent, neither despair nor resignation, optimism not pessimism, quietism nor indifference. The mood, and the outlook beneath it, make him hopelessly out of place in a world in which the renaissance has triumphed only to be perverted, and in which the products of secular humanism, rationalism and science challenge their own hopes, indeed their beginnings.” 6 The clinamen sometimes comes abstract — the rarefied swerve of possibility. But in the place we gather &mdash where this text has landed — in the heart of settler colony denial — the clinamen reminds of familiar violence and goes maximum. The earth’s swerve. Topography’s tip. Physics gone violent. Here, drift is initiated by the tear of flesh, scurvy voyages, frontier blood and the deracination from belonging. Here, war precedes drift. We all got tossed. Here. Pay attention. The country has its own gaze. ‘Lest we forget’. The seasonal turn on aborescent substances starts with a fall, an upwards rupture, a drop, a cut, a storm, a violence, a loss, forced migration, refugees, agricultural imperialism, settler wheat and poisoned rations. Pay attention to aftermath debris. Don’t drift too far from the real. History hasn’t settled into the water. It still tosses limbs back and forth. Surrounded by the backdrop of Dreaming country the old man archives and dreams. Both ways of settling into the real. But lest we forget, time, in this place, has no textual tick — tock. Our bodies know this, even though we persist with shipwreck illusions. It’s difficult being here. Here. Pay inattention. I walk through eucalyptus, over dried out clay pans and under kookaburras. It’s been two years in-between. This time country speaks strong underfoot. Forget books, forget texts, forget other lands and times, beginning and end. Be here. All falls raw. Leaves drop and refuse to compost. Bark untethers quick. Light denudes worlds. The heated horizon melts monoliths. It’s enough to make Cartesians shiver. Awake. Refuse the temptation to run. Have enough courage to drift into here. Love with a gum tree. Stand with her whole and dissolving. She moves light between our limbs, tossing them to wind. She — the original romance — is the dream that dares touch flesh and reaches over nightmares with elemental desire. I gaze and lose me. There’s no distance. The land that ‘growed me up’ speaks with symbiotic breath. There’s no division, no separation, no other. The gum is plastic arborescence. You be my body for me, always were. …..but I wake to driftwood histories and recall slaughters. Drifted, wicked fellow citizen — the other is someone else’s blind sleep. Betrayal maintains the other as mine. Archives reveal this place doesn’t belong to me. Body articulates that it became here. Gumtree cares not………her arms take me in anyway. “Like all men he is a philosopher in being able to use his power of abstract reason. His genius, his metier, and in some sense — his fate is that because of endowment and circumstance this power has channelled itself mainly into one activity, making sense out of social relations among men living together.” 7 The old man excavates seven generations of settler ancestors. They’re an ordinary lot with written-upon skin. He records genocides that occurred alongside his peoples fertility. Bodies rise from riverbeds like sovereign sacrifices. It hurts. It disrupts. He labours at the past with gestures that might go unnoticed in a country suffocated by rich amnesia. Inside walls, he seems attentive to historical details. Outside he seems inattentive to time, lost to us and embedded in a family of active matter — the bush. His driftwood skin appears around my eyes - grooves of experience, the rush of cruel sun, the push of blind winds, and the love of everything. The sovereign’s reluctant children are thrown here by, with and through blood, but country gets in and sculpts us here. photo: Chris Corrigan “But his abstractions do not put him at war with himself.” 8 The kangaroo family appears at dusk. When the sun is soft I follow the old man into the back paddock. Children skip behind us. In-between generations, I step into the old man’s driftwood leanings. My feet find traces of his understanding – the archivist that reads trees. Here, on home dirt, inattention and attention collapse as we wander into where we are. The roo family gaze at us. Through the grass the old man’s wooden finger articulates kin’s details. He points to the head male, the mother holding a joey in pouch and the young warriors side by side. My children, quieter than ever, meet the laser - eyed silence of another family. In half-light Dad, me, and the kids mirror the kangaroo constellation and stand gentle together. At the bushblock’s limit we encounter ancestral desires. White peoples are subject to driftwood histories. We’re severed limbs attempting to fuse here now, with what was, only to discover our skin becomes racked and embedded with the weather. Into the shelter and fissures of this difficult and ambiguous inheritance, I fall into dream light until balance saturates. Light breaks when the kangaroos move. They bounce someplace else without effort or impact. We turn and tread through the dark towards home. It’s time to sleep. Driftwood skin covers the country. Dreaming is still. photo: Bronwyn Lay NOTES W.E.H. Stanner, The Dreaming and Other Essays , (Melbourne: Black Inc. Agenda, 2009), 72. Ibid., 56. Stanner is recalling one intelligent old man who said to him, “with a cadence almost as though he had been speaking in verse.” Ibid., 60. Ibid., 69. Ibid., 58. Ibid., 67. Ibid., 68. Ibid., 59.  . (shrink)

Dünya genelinde yaşanan çatışmalarda dinî inanç ve değerlerin araçsal kullanımı, din ve şiddet konularının merkeze alındığı birçok tartışmaya kaynaklık etmektedir. Yapılan tartışmalar dinî inanç ve değerlerin şiddet içeren davranışlara neden olduğu varsayımı etrafında şekillense de din ve şiddet arasında var olan ilişki oldukça karmaşık bir yapıya sahiptir. Zira, dinsel geleneklerin merkezinde yer alan kutsal metinler, savaş ve şiddet içeren örnek ve sembollerin yanı sıra barış ve uzlaşı içeren taleplere de sahiptir. Başka bir ifade ile dinî gelenekler, tarihî süreç içerisinde hem (...) temel ahlaki değerlerin hayata geçirilmesi hem de barışçıl tutumların benimsenmesinde ilham verici bir kaynak olarak hizmet etmişlerdir. Diğer taraftan insanlık tarihinin en kötü örnekleri de dinî inanç ve değerler ile bağlantılıdır. Tarihî kayıtlar, din adına yapılan savaşlarda binlerce insanın hayatını kaybettiğine ve bir o kadarının da doğrudan ya da dolaylı şiddete maruz kaldığına işaret etmektedir. Öyleyse kutsal metinlerde yer alan herhangi bir pasajdan ya da geçmişte yaşanmış olumlu ya da olumsuz herhangi bir örnekten hareketle dinî inanç ve değerlerin bütünüyle savaşa veya barışa hizmet ettiğini söylemek gerçekçi bir tutum olmayacaktır. Bununla beraber Amerika’da gerçekleşen 11 Eylül saldırıları dinsel şiddet konusunda farklı görüşlerin öne sürülmesine neden olmuştur. İronik bir şekilde 2001’de dinî terörizm ile mücadele kararı alan Amerika’nın dinî inanç ve değerleri şiddetin meşrulaştırılmasında bir araç olarak kullanması, 11 Eylül’ün benzer saldırılar için bir arketip olarak kullanılmasına zemin oluşturmuştur. Zira Müslüman olduğu iddia edilen on dokuz kişinin kaçırdığı dört uçağın Dünya Ticaret Merkezi’ne yapılan saldırı için kullanılması sadece dinsel şiddet tartışmalarının İslâm ve Müslümanlar üzerinden yapılmasına neden olmamış aynı zamanda İslâm coğrafyasının yeniden şekillenmesine neden olacak askeri ve siyasi kararların alınmasına da zemin oluşturmuştur. Bu saldırı neticesinde dinsel terör örgütlerine karşı harekete geçtiğini iddia eden George W. Bush, verilen mücadeleyi şeytani güçlere karşı Haçlı Seferi olarak yorumlayarak Afganistan ve Irak’ta on binlerce insanın ölmesi ile sonuçlanan askerî operasyonları başlatmıştır. Benzer şekilde 7 Ekim 2023 tarihinde gerçekleşen saldırıları Yeşaya kehaneti üzerinden temellendiren Binyamin Netanyahu, 7 Ekim olaylarını İsrail’in 11 Eylül’ü olarak niteleyerek kadın-erkek, genç-yaşlı ayrımı yapılmaksızın binlerce sivilin ölmesine neden olmuştur. Yaşanan çatışmalar her ne kadar teopolitik, ekonomik ya da kültürel nedenlere dayansa da şiddetin meşrulaştırılmasında din dilinin kullanılması kanaatimizce din ve şiddet konusu ile ilgili tartışmaların araştırılmasını gerektirmektedir. Bu nedenle dinsel şiddet tartışmaları bağlamında ele alınan bu çalışmada genel bir değerlendirme yapılması amaçlanmıştır. Konu incelenirken önce 11 Eylül saldırılarından günümüze dinsel şiddet tartışmaları ile ilgili farklı bakış açıları üzerinde durulmuş daha sonra monoteist geleneğe ait kutsal metinlerde yer alan şiddet ifadelerinin tarihî süreç içerisinde farklı şekillerde yorumlandığına dikkat çekilerek dinsel olarak nitelenen şiddet eylemlerinin çok sayıda ve karmaşık nedenlere dayandığı gösterilmeye çalışılmıştır. Konu Yahudi, Hıristiyan ve İslâm gelenekleri üzerinden ele alınmış ve monoteist geleneğe ait dinî inanç ve değerlerin şiddete referans olarak gösterildiği örnekler ile sınırlandırılmıştır. Fenomenolojik bakış açısı ile ele alınan araştırmada dinsel olarak ifade edilen şiddet eylemlerinin belli amaçlar doğrultusunda kutsal metinlerin yeniden yorumlanması ve yeni yorumun idealleştirilmesi ile ilişkili olduğu görülmüştür. (shrink)

Buss, S.R., The undecidability of k-provability, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 53 75-102. The k-provability problem is, given a first-order formula ø and an integer k, to determine if ø has a proof consisting of k or fewer lines . This paper shows that the k-provability problem for the sequent calculus is undecidable. Indeed, for every r.e. set X there is a formula ø and an integer k such that for all n,ø has a proof of k sequents if (...) and only if n ε X. (shrink)

The last year, June 1992 through September 1993, has seen a great deal of ferment with respect to access to and financing of health care in the United States. The elections of 1992 portend dramatic changes in the American health care system, and vigorous debate regarding both expansion of access to health care and transformation of the health care financing system is taking place at the federal and the state levels. In fact, however, the time period covered here produced remarkably (...) few changes in the law, particularly at the federal level. The one piece of Medicare and Medicaid legislation passed by Congress in the fall of 1992, H.R. 11, was vetoed by President Bush immediately after the election. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 contained a host of minor adjustments to the Medicare and the Medicaid programs, but only the Medicaid asset transfer provisions and extensions to the self-referral provisions of the fraud and abuse laws, discussed below, are of import to us. (shrink)

Bu çalışmanın temel amacı 24 Şubat 2022’de başlayan Rusya–Ukrayna çatışmasında Avrupa merkezli medya organlarının ürettiği işgal söylemine eleştirel bir perspektifle yaklaşmaktır. Çalışmada Rusya’nın Ukrayna’yı işgal ettiğini öne süren ülkelerin Rus sanatçılara, sporculara ve yönetmenlere uyguladığı sert yaptırımlara yer verilmiş ve hemen sonrasında sosyal medyaya yansıyan bazı ifadeler eleştirel söylem analizi yöntemiyle incelenmiştir. 29 Nisan 2022 tarihinde Pentagon sözcüsü John Kirby’nin katıldığı bir basın toplantısında çatışmayı işgal söylemiyle sunarken aksi bir yaklaşımın etik ve ahlaka ters düşeceğini ima eden ifadesi etiğin de (...) eleştirel biçimde ele alınmasına zemin hazırlamıştır. Çalışmada Kant ve Hegel’in görüşleri üzerinden etik ve ahlak kavramlarının ayrıştırılması amaçlanırken bu filozofların bazı teorilerini Avrupa merkezci ve zaman zaman ırkçı bir bakış açısıyla kurguladığını savunan görüşlere de yer verilmiştir. Amaçsal örneklem yöntemiyle seçilen Eski Amerika başkanı George Bush’un katıldığı bir programda Ukrayna yerine Irak’ın işgal edildiğini belirten gafı ve eski Ukrayna başsavcı yardımcısı David Sakvarelidze’nin çatışma esnasında ölen Ukraynalılara sırf mavi gözlü ve sarı saçlı Avrupalılar oldukları için üzüldüğünü çağrıştıran açıklamaları üzerinden Avrupa merkezci ve ırkçı yaklaşımların günümüzdeki konumu sorgulanmıştır. Çalışmada başta ABD ve İngiltere olmak üzere bazı Avrupa ülkelerinin Rusya’nın Ukrayna’yı işgal ettiği söylemini, insan yaşamını önemseyen etik bir tavırdan ziyade politik bir refleksle ürettiği sonucuna ulaşılmıştır. (shrink)

I answer Alvin Plantinga's challenge to provide a ‘proper’ de jure objection to religious belief. What I call the ‘sophisticates’ evidential objection' concludes that sophisticated Christians lack epistemic justification for believing central Christian propositions. The SEO utilizes a theory of epistemic justification in the spirit of the evidentialism of Richard Feldman and Earl Conee. I defend philosophical interest in the SEO against objections from Reformed epistemology, by addressing Plantinga's criteria for a proper de jure objection, his anti-evidentialist arguments, and the (...) relevance of ‘impulsional evidence’. I argue that no result from Plantinga-style Reformed epistemology precludes the reasons I offer in favour of giving the SEO its due philosophical attention. (shrink)