Mathematicians often conduct aesthetic judgements to evaluate mathematical objects such as equations or proofs. But is there a consensus about which mathematical objects are beautiful? We used a comparative judgement technique to measure aesthetic intuitions among British mathematicians, Chinese mathematicians, and British mathematics undergraduates, with the aim of assessing whether judgements of mathematical beauty are influenced by cultural differences or levels of expertise. We found aesthetic agreement both within and across these demographic groups. We conclude that judgements of mathematical beauty (...) are not strongly influenced by cultural difference, levels of expertise, and types of mathematical objects. Our findings contrast with recent studies that found mathematicians often disagree with each other about mathematical beauty. (shrink)

This paper provides an exploratory comparative assessment of the institutional pressures influencing corporate social responsibility in a developed country, UK, vs. a developing country, Brazil, based on a survey of different actors. Information on sustainability concerns, organizational strategies and mechanisms of pressure was collected through interviews with environmental regulatory agencies, financial institutions, media and non-governmental organizations. Our results confirm that the more advanced awareness and CSR responsiveness in the UK is a consequence of a predominance of coercive and normative forces (...) on the organizational field. The institutional forces tend to build a Brazilian organizational field that is relational based and risk intensive. The findings lend support to the view that CSR responses are unlikely to be easily transformed into uniform standardized practices across the globe. This paper contributes to a collective understanding of the organizational field and a common template for CSR in the context of developed and developing countries. (shrink)

Study on the philosophy of Vijñānabhikshu, 16th cent.

The seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic requires a look into the implementation of drug registration rules for COVID-19 vaccines. Amidst the surrounding exigencies, vaccines being a biological product, require comprehensive and continuing pre and post registration rules to ensure their safety and efficacy. The study focuses on Malaysia which has rules on drug registration that have been successfully applied to vaccines. The study shows that the rules have been tailor-made to emergency situations. At the moment, special rules have been introduced (...) including to allow use of COVID-19 vaccines as unregistered product. Recognition of COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) facility and requirement for government sale only, are among the safety valves. The study shows that these however are temporary measures against the backdrops of possible entry of private players in the vaccination process. Therefore, regulatory responses to intellectual property (IP) related conditions underlying drug registration, and measures to ensure risk management involved in vaccine production, approval and administration are needed in the progressive rules pending further development of research in the area. (shrink)

A metáfora do ciborgue é um constructo epistêmico relativamente recente. Publicado em 1985, o Cyborg Manifesto, de Donna Haraway, mobilizou o imaginário acadêmico-cultural apontando para a emergência do híbrido de máquina e organismo, indicando o nó produzido nas linhas de sentido históricas, vivenciadas na fusão entre técnicas (bio-info-cogno) e nós, os organismos vivos; tornando-se, assim, matriz da filosofia ciborgue. Academicamente, coube a Thierry Hoquet anatomizar o ciborgue na obra Filosofia Ciborgue: pensar contra dualismos (publicada em Português no ano de 2019 (...) e, no original, em 2011), fenômeno este que aparece no século XX com características próprias, desafiando categorias epistemológicas estanques, cuja pretensão é definir os limites entre o humano e o não humano, entre o que é próprio da natureza e o que é parte da cultura. (shrink)

Responsibility is one of the characteristics that distinguishes human from other living beings. Man is an entity that can think independently and has a right to choose. Everything on earth is created for man. Besides reason and will, countless blessings have been given to man. Man will be taken into account from all these blessings. Responsibility is the legal situation in which assets possessing intelligence and cognition will be faced as a result of a violation of a rule or a (...) voluntary act. Mental and revelation evidence shows the responsibility of man, one of the most valuable beings in the world. Blessings are an important element in the context of human testing and responsibility.In this research, which aims to explain the notion of blessing in the Qur'an in the context of human responsibility, man's will and actions, responsibility, the meaning of the concept of blessing, forms used in the Qur'an, some concepts used in the meaning of blessing in the Qur'an. At this point, the wisdom of blessings, the position of man in the face of blessing, and the duties demanded by man in return for blessings have been explained. Blessing is a broad concept with positive and negative aspects. Therefore, it has been emphasized importance of the element of blessing connection with the responsibility of man in terms of the world's life and the hereafter. (shrink)

The idea that what we perceive are tropes is anything but new. In fact, it was one of the reasons why the ontology of tropes was postulated in the first place. Still, the claim that we perceive tropes is invariably and purely based on pre-philosophical intuitions or, indirectly, either as a supporting argument for the advantages of content view when compared to the relational view of experience, or as a supporting argument in favor of the irreducible subjective character of experience. (...) In this paper, I take the content view for granted and argue in favor of what is herein referred to as the trope-content view of experience. My defense is a case of inference to the best explanation. The trope-content view can meet all reasonable desiderata on the experience and its content without assuming gaps or making the ad hoc assumption that there are different layers of content, or so shall I argue. (shrink)

Research articles on Indic philosophy and religion.

This is an edited collection of original essays that combine philosophy, phenomenology, and literature to reflect on modern ideas about orientation and disorientation, grounds and groundlessness.

On lira ici un dialogue qui ne s’est donné ni règles préliminaires de progression ni aboutissement calculé d’avance, mais qui s’est inventé au fur et à mesure de son avancée. L’intention initiale était d’examiner ce que Heidegger nomme « la traduction occidentale » dans La parole d’Anaximandre : d’une part, que veut dire « traduction » là où l’on se guide sur des « traces » dont la nature même, comme traces, est problématique? D’autre part, comment comprendre le Brauch qui (...) porte la charge finale de cette « traduction »? En arrière-plan surgit la question : quelle est donc l’histoire dont Heidegger se réclame? (shrink)

The aim of the present article is to reflect upon comparative procedures at stake in the acknowledgment of differences, following some paths of Husserl's and Heidegger's views on “comparative examination” . Although using the same expression as Husserl, Heidegger presents in this concept, rather, a phenomenology of correspondence. The encounter with otherness is described as correspondence to the immensity of the event of the world in Dasein . From out of a “destruction” of comparative examinations, it becomes possible to seize (...) the a-subjective and ek-static structure of Dasein and claim a corresponding way of encountering otherness. In this corresponding way, the Other appears first as non-otherness, beyond a dialectics of selfhood and otherness. (shrink)

The present article discusses the relation between painting and music in the work by Paul Klee, bringing it into conversation with the music by Anton Webern. It assumes, as a starting point, that the main question is not about relating painting and music but rather about the relation between moving towards painting and moving towards music, hence the relation between forming forces and not between formed forms. Since for Klee the musical structure of the pictorial is understood as “active linear (...) polyphony,” the article develops this notion in conversation with Webern’s thoughts on the polyphonic structure of twelve-tone music. The general purpose of the article is to determine what kind of thoughts emerge from the in-between of painting and music. (shrink)

Using abstract art as a paradigm, this paper attempts to think, in a provisional manner, the parameters of what the author calls `abstract hermeneutics'—a way of thinking capable of responding to the withdrawing, or abstracting , movement of Being. Such abstract thinking—which is an abstracting thinking of the abstract—aims to step beyond objectivity precisely in order to return to phenomenological concreteness. Through an engagement with Heidegger's understanding of the formal indicative role of the human being as sign ( Zeichen ), (...) the affinity between the abstracting gestures of abstract art, and the absenting characteristic of human existence, is explored. (shrink)

This paper is both systematic and historical in nature. From a historical viewpoint, I aim to show that to establish Wittgenstein’s claim that “an ‘inner process’ stands in need of outward criteria” there is an enthymeme in Wittgenstein’s private language argument overlooked in the literature, namely Wittgenstein’s suggestion that both perceptual and bodily experiences are _transparent_ in the relevant sense that one cannot point to a mental state and wonder “What is that?” From a systematic viewpoint, I aim to show (...) that Wittgenstein’s PLA teaches us that the prevailing picture of the nature of phenomenal concepts is upside down: we can only introspectively know what is going on inside our heads, after we learn of what is going on outside. In this regard, I aim to defend two associate claims against the prevailing view of PCs on the basis of PLA. First, by means of transparency, I aim to show that there is no _de re_ awareness of our private sensation that could determine the meaning of sensation-words; for example, I am never aware _of _the phenomenal blueness of my experience of something blue. The second associated claim is that introspective self-knowledge of our private sensation is always _de dicto_. We can only know introspectively that phenomenal blueness is the phenomenal character of the experience we are undergoing after we have learned _that _ blue is the color that usually causes in us that kind of experience. Likewise, we can only introspectively know that pain is the phenomenal character of the experience we are undergoing after we have learned that pain is what usually causes some typical pain behavior. (shrink)

This paper has two aims. First, it aims to provide an adverbial account of the idea of an intransitive self-consciousness and, second, it aims to argue in favor of this account. These aims both require a new framework that emerges from a critical review of Perry’s famous notion of the “unarticulated constituents” of propositional content. First, I aim to show that the idea of an intransitive self-consciousness can be phenomenologically described in an analogy with the adverbial theory of perception. In (...) an adverbial theory of perception, we do not see a blue sense-data, but we see something blue-ly, whereas in intransitive self-consciousness we are not conscious of ourselves when we undergo a conscious experience—instead, we experience something self-consciously. But what does this mean precisely? First, I take transitive self-consciousness to be the first-person operator that prefixes the content of any experience that the subject undergoes, regardless of whether or not the subject is self-referred. Further, I argue that this first-person adverbial way of entertaining a content of any experience in Perry’s revised framework fixes the subject as part of the circumstance of the evaluation of the content of her own experience. We can only evaluate whether the content is veridical of falsidical relative to the subject undergoing the experience. This is referred to here as “self-concernment without self-reference.” When I am absorbed reading a book, I do not self-represent my own experience of reading a book, let alone see myself as a constituent of the content of this experience. Even so, I experience that reading self-consciously in the precise sense that I do belong the circumstance of the evaluation of the selfless content of my experience of reading the book. The content of the experience of reading a book is simply a propositional function, true or false of myself. (shrink)

Content nonconceptualism and State conceptualism are motivated by constraints of content-attribution that pull in opposite directions, namely, the so-called cognitive significance requirement and what I would like to call here the same representing constraint. The solution to this apparent contradiction is the rejection of the real content view and the adherence to what I call here Content-pragmatism. In CPR, “proposition” is not as real as a mental state, but rather is a term of art that semanticists use, as a matter (...) of theoretical convenience, to classify mental states. What follows from CPR is Content-pluralism : there is no such a thing as the content of experience. Because both criticisms and the defense of SNC overlook CPR and CP, they are ineffective. In this paper, I will argue that the opposition between SNC and CNC is a real one, but only a relative one, that is, relative to the opposite constraints to be met, namely CSR and SRR. If we want to meet CSR, the best we can do is to let the content of experience be modeled as neo-Fregean content, namely a compound of non-conceptual modes of presentation of objects and properties. In this case, CNC prevails. In contrast, if we want to meet SRR, the best we can do is let the content of experience be modeled either as a Russellian compound of objects and properties or as a function from possible worlds to truth-values. In this case, SNC prevails. (shrink)

Islam and politics in Iran; and on philosophy of political science.

Qism 1. al-Turāth al-falsafī al-Yūnānī ḥattá Aflāṭūn.

Cet article présente une discussion sur la pensée de la mutation chez Jean-Luc Nancy, elle-même une mutation des idées philosophiques traditionnelles sur la transformation. Il entend montrer que devant le sens intransformé de transformation dans la tradition philosophique de Platon à la philosophie contemporaine, Jean-Luc Nancy ouvre une autre voie lorsqu’il comprend transformation plutôt comme touche de l’âme. Loin de soumettre la mutation à une arche-téléologie des significations, la pensée de la mutation, une pensée de la touche de l’âme, trouve (...) le sens de la mutation dans l’« en train de se faire », plutôt que dans la quête de forme et de figuration. C’est dans la mutation du sens de l’entre-deux compris comme « en train d’être », que le sens d’une mutation de sens se donne à voir dans son non-figuration. Par-là, on découvre dans la pensée de Nancy non plus un autre sens d’âme, mais comment l’âme du sens touche le monde. (shrink)