This ambitious book looks into the reasons for the exceptional durability of the Chinese empire, which lasted for more than two millennia (221 B.C.E. - 1911 C.E.). Yuri Pines identifies the roots of the empire's longevity in the activities of thinkers of the Warring States period (453-221 B.C.E.), who, in their search for solutions to an ongoing political crisis, developed ideals, values, and perceptions that would become essential for the future imperial polity. In marked distinction to similar empires worldwide, (...) the Chinese empire was envisioned and to a certain extent 'preplanned' long before it came into being. As a result, it was not only a military and administrative construct, but also an intellectual one. Pines makes the argument that it was precisely its ideological appeal that allowed the survival and regeneration of the empire after repeated periods of turmoil. "Envisioning Eternal Empire" presents a panoptic survey of philosophical and social conflicts in Warring States political culture. By examining the extant corpus of preimperial literature, including transmitted texts and manuscripts uncovered at archaeological sites, Pines locates the common ideas of competing thinkers that underlie their ideological controversies. This bold approach allows him to transcend the once fashionable perspective of competing 'schools of thought' and show that beneath the immense pluralism of Warring States thought one may identify common ideological choices that eventually shaped traditional Chinese political culture. The result is a refreshingly novel look at the foundational period in Chinese intellectual history. (shrink)

I argue that the contemporary interplay of cosmology and particle physics in their joint effort to understand the processes at work during the first moments of the big bang has important implications for understanding the nature of lawhood. I focus on the phenomenon of spontaneous symmetry breaking responsible for generating the masses of certain particles. This phenomenon presents problems for the currently fashionable Dretske-Tooley-Armstrong theory and strongly favors a rival nomic ontology of causal powers.

Yuri Balashov sets out major rival views of persistence--endurance, perdurance, and exdurance--in a spacetime framework and proceeds to investigate the implications of Einstein's theory of relativity for the debate about persistence. His overall conclusion--that relativistic considerations favour four-dimensionalism over three-dimensionalism--is hardly surprising. It is, however, anything but trivial. Contrary to a common misconception, there is no straightforward argument from relativity to four-dimensionalism. The issues involved are complex, and the debate is closely entangled with a number of other philosophical disputes, (...) including those about the nature and ontology of time, parts and wholes, material constitution, causation and properties, and vagueness. (shrink)

У статті аналізуються проблеми конфесійної ідентичності віруючих українського православ'я в умовах сучасних цивілізаційних викликів. Встановлено, що для значної кількості віруючих належність до етноконфесійної спільноти не є базовим ідентифікатом, тому самодекларація ідентифікації з православною конфесією значною мірою має номінальний характер, зумовлена сприйняттям православ'я як культурної традиції.

In spite of the fact that true arithmetic reduces to the monadic second-order theory of the real line, Peano arithmetic cannot be interpreted in the monadic second-order theory of the real line.

Scale-free network models describe many natural and social phenomena. In particular, networks of interacting components of a living cell were shown to possess scale-free properties. A recent study(1) compares the system-level properties of metabolic and information networks in 43 archaeal, bacterial and eukaryal species and claims that the scale-free organization of these networks is more conserved during evolution than their content. BioEssays 24:105–109, 2002. Published 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The structures of everyday life, where religious identity is constructed, are analysed in the article of Boreyko Yuri Grigorovich «The structures of everyday life in the design of religious identity». Determined that the basis of personal and group religious identity are mental structures, symbolic actions, rituals, language.

Paul (2014, 2015a) argues that one cannot rationally decide whether to have a transformative experience by trying to form judgments, in advance, about (i) what it would feel like to have that experience, and (ii) the subjective value of having such an experience. The problem is if you haven’t had the experience then you cannot know what it is like, and you need to know what it is like to assess its value. However, in earlier work I argued that ‘what (...) it is like’-knowledge comes in degrees, and I briefly suggested that, consequently, some instances of Paul’s argument schema might commit a fallacy of equivocation. The aim of this paper is to further explore and strengthen this objection by, first, offering a new argument—the modelling argument—in support of it, and then by evaluating a range of replies that might be given to this objection on Paul’s behalf. I conclude that each reply either fails or, at best, only partially succeeds in defending some but not all instances of Paul’s argument schema. In closing, I consider how we might revise Paul’s concepts of transformative experiences and choices in response to this conclusion. (shrink)

Background In an increasingly globalized world, legal protocols related to health care that are both effective and culturally sensitive are paramount in providing excellent quality of care as well as protection for physicians tasked with decision making. Here, we analyze the current medicolegal status of brain death diagnosis with regard to end-of-life care in Japan, China, and South Korea from the perspectives of front-line health care workers. Main body Japan has legally wrestled with the concept of brain death for decades. (...) An inability to declare brain death without consent from family coupled with cultural expectations of family involvement in medical care is mirrored in other Confucian-based cultures and may complicate care for patients from these countries when traveling or working overseas. Within Japan, China, and South Korea, medicolegal shortcomings in the diagnosis of brain death act as a great source of stress for physicians and expose them to potential public and legal scorn. Here, we detail the medicolegal status of brain death diagnosis within Japan and compare it to China and South Korea to find common ground and elucidate the impact of legal ambiguity on health care workers. Conclusion The Confucian cultural foundation of multiple Asian countries raises common issues of family involvement with diagnosis and cultural considerations that must be met. Leveraging public education systems may increase awareness of brain death issues and lead to evolving laws that clarify such end-of-life issues while protecting physicians from sociocultural backlash. (shrink)

This article examines the method of reflective equilibrium (RE) and its role in philosophical inquiry. It begins with an overview of RE before discussing some of the subtleties involved in its interpretation, including challenges to the standard assumption that RE is a form of coherentism. It then evaluates some of the main objections to RE, in particular, the criticism that this method generates unreasonable beliefs. It concludes by considering how RE relates to recent debates about the role of intuitions in (...) philosophy. (shrink)

How should intellectualists respond to apparent Gettier-style counterexamples? Stanley offers an orthodox response which rejects the claim that the subjects in such scenarios possess knowledge-how. I argue that intellectualists should embrace a revisionary response according to which knowledge-how is a distinctively practical species of knowledge-that that is compatible with Gettier-style luck.

In this paper I develop three different arguments against the thesis that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. Knowledge-that is widely thought to be subject to an anti-luck condition, a justified or warranted belief condition, and a belief condition, respectively. The arguments I give suggest that if either of these standard assumptions is correct then knowledge-how is not a kind of knowledge-that. In closing I identify a possible alternative to the standard Rylean and intellectualist accounts of knowledge-how. This alternative view (...) illustrates that even if the arguments given here succeed it might still be reasonable to hold that knowing how to do something is a matter of standing in an intentional relation to a proposition other than the knowledge-that relation. (shrink)

Knowledge-how often appears to be more difficult to transmit by testimony than knowledge-that and knowledge-wh. Some philosophers have argued that this difference provides us with an important objection to intellectualism—the view that knowledge-how is a species of knowledge-that. This article defends intellectualism against these testimony-based objections.

What follows for the ability hypothesis reply to the knowledge argument if knowledge-how is just a form of knowledge-that? The obvious answer is that the ability hypothesis is false. For the ability hypothesis says that, when Mary sees red for the first time, Frank Jackson’s super-scientist gains only knowledge-how and not knowledge-that. In this paper I argue that this obvious answer is wrong: a version of the ability hypothesis might be true even if knowledge-how is a form of knowledge-that. To (...) establish this conclusion I utilize Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson’s well-known account of knowledge-how as “simply a species of propositional knowledge” . I demonstrate that we can restate the core claims of the ability hypothesis – that Mary only gains new knowledge-how and not knowledge-that – within their account of knowledge-how as a species of knowledge-that. I examine the implications of this result for both critics and proponents of the ability hypothesis. (shrink)

Previous work suggests that Asians allocate more attention to configuration information than Caucasian Americans do. Yet this cultural variation has been found only with stimuli such as natural scenes and objects that require both feature- and configuration-based processing. Here, we show that the cultural variation also exists in face perception—a domain that is typically viewed as configural in nature. When asked to identify a prototypic face for a set of disparate exemplars, Japanese were more likely than Caucasian Americans to use (...) overall resemblance rather than feature matching. Moreover, in a speeded identity-matching task, Japanese were more accurate than Americans in identifying the spatial configuration of features (e.g., eyes). Together, these findings underscore the robustness of culture’s influences on cognition. (shrink)

It is often said that ‘what it is like’-knowledge cannot be acquired by consulting testimony or reading books [Lewis 1998; Paul 2014; 2015a]. However, people also routinely consult books like What It Is Like to Go to War [Marlantes 2014], and countless ‘what it is like’ articles and youtube videos, in the apparent hope of gaining knowledge about what it is like to have experiences they have not had themselves. This article examines this puzzle and tries to solve it by (...) appealing to recent work on knowing-wh ascriptions. In closing I indicate the wider significance of these ideas by showing how they can help us to evaluate prominent arguments by Paul [2014; 2015a] concerning transformative experiences. (shrink)

Although considerations based on contemporary space-time theories, such as special and general relativity, seem highly relevant to the debate about persistence, their significance has not been duly appreciated. My goal in this paper is twofold: (1) to reformulate the rival positions in the debate (i.e., endurantism [three-dimensionalism] and perdurantism [four-dimensionalism, the doctrine of temporal parts]) in the framework of special relativistic space-time; and (2) to argue that, when so reformulated, perdurantism exhibits explanatory advantages over endurantism. The argument builds on the (...) fact that four-dimensional entities extended in space as well as time are relativistically invariant in a way three-dimensional entities are not. (shrink)

This article attempts to outline some critical aspects of the accelerationist movement. More specifically, it argues that light can be shed on key aspects of the political proposals of Williams and Srnicek by considering them from the perspective of the socio-political reflections of both Lacan and Deleuze and Guattari. Anti-Oedipus is one crucial starting point for accelerationist thinking, in terms of the concept of the ‘machinic’ and the explicit reference to ‘acceleration’, but it is equally obvious that Lacan has been (...) an important figure in the debate on the topic of ‘desire’. Likewise, and for the same reasons, accelerationism offers the potential for a fruitful reconsideration of Deleuzian philosophy, and of the difficult relationship between schizo- analysis and psycho-analysis. We argue that, in the light of accelerationism, the perspectives of Deleuze and Guattari and Lacan do converge, in particular around the theoretical articulation of the concept of the ‘political’. Accelerationism, as many critics have noted, has numerous implications in the field of subjectivity and often falls into a general plea for a strong neo-Enlightenment. Hence we will attempt to explicate these implications by attempting to read accelerationism via the psychoanalytic categories of jouissance and fantasy. This last category, as Stavrakakis has shown, is directly linked to the political category of ‘Utopia’, and therefore provides an adequate theoretical basis for such a psychoanalytic reading of accelerationism. Should accelerationism be considered the only way out of the socio-political constraints of neoliberalism today? However we approach this question, the argument pursued here is that the best starting points for a critique of accelerationism are the concepts of jouissance, the state/capital relationship, schizo-analysis and paranoid ways of functioning. (shrink)

Hawley introduced the idea of the client's perspective on knowledge, which she used to illuminate knowing-how and cases of epistemic injustice involving knowing-how. In this paper, I explore how Hawley's idea might be used to illuminate not only knowing-how, but other forms of knowledge that, like knowing-how, are often claimed to be distinct from mere knowing-that, focusing on the case studies of moral understanding and ‘what it is like’-knowledge.

The information-hierarchical approach is used to analyze the evolutionary developed organization of mankind. This organization is shown to be hierarchical, from molecular hierarchical levels to the religious ones. Time cycles of each level operation are included in the greater cycle of the next level according to the specific schemes defined by the common information principle of natural system development. Time cycles of levels have duration of 1 second, 6 seconds, 42 seconds, 24 hours, 11 days, 1 years, 33 year, 1,000 (...) years, 3,000 years or 6,000 years and all together make up the mankind clock that is similar to the formerly ascertained biosphere clock. The cycles of duration from 1 second to 33 years form the human biological clock, so the information-hierarchical organization of cell metabolism manifests itself as the key mechanism of the clock. The new scientific field has been characterized. It is the management of sustainable development of the states as evolutionary developed systems with the use of information relationships of their functioning. In the case of Christianity adoption by any large ethnos the next 1,000-year cycle of the Christianity-Judaism system will start. (shrink)

In two earlier works (Balashov, 2000a: Philosophical Studies 99, 129–166; 2000b: Philosophy of Science 67 (Suppl), S549–S562), I have argued that considerations based on special relativity and the notion of coexistence favor the perdurance view of persistence over its endurance rival. Cody Gilmore (2002: Philosophical Studies 109, 241–263) has subjected my argument to an insightful three fold critique. In the first part of this paper I respond briefly to Gilmore’s first two objections. I then grant his observation that anyone who (...) can resist the first objection is liable to succumb to the third one. This, however, opens a way to other closely related relativistic arguments against endurantism that are immune to all three objections and, in addition, throw new light on a number of important issues in the ontology of persistence. I develop two such novel arguments in the second half of the paper. (shrink)

in D. Dieks (ed.), The Ontology of Spacetime, Vol. 2. Elsevier, forthcoming.

The nature of persistence of physical objects over time has been intensely debated in contemporary metaphysics. The two opposite views are widely known as "endurantism" (or "three-dimensionalism") and "perdurantism" ("four-dimensionalism"). According to the former, objects are extended in three spatial dimensions and persist through time by being wholly present at any moment at which they exist. On the rival account, objects are extended both in space and time and persist by having "temporal parts," no part being present at more than (...) one time. Relativistic considerations seem highly relevant to this debate. But they have played little role in it so far. This paper seeks to remedy that situation. I argue that considerations based on the special theory of relativity and the notion of coexistence favor perdurantism over endurantism. (shrink)

On the B-theory of time, the experiences we have throughout our conscious lives have the same ontological status: they all tenselessly occur at their respective dates. But we do not seem to experience all of them on the same footing. In fact, we tend to believe that only our present experiences are real, to the exclusion of the past and future ones. The B-theorist has to maintain that this belief is an illusion and explain the origin of the illusion. The (...) paper argues that this cannot be properly done unless one rejects endurantism in favor of the stage view of persistence. (shrink)

This chapter explores the relationship between knowing-how and skill, as well other success-in-action notions like dispositions and abilities. I offer a new view of knowledge-how which combines elements of both intellectualism and Ryleanism. According to this view, knowing how to perform an action is both a kind of knowing-that (in accord with intellectualism) and a complex multi-track dispositional state (in accord with Ryle’s view of knowing-how). I argue that this new view—what I call practical attitude intellectualism—offers an attractive set of (...) solutions to various puzzles concerning the connections between knowing-how and abilities and skills to perform intentional actions. (shrink)

This chapter examines some key developments in discussions of the social dimensions of knowing-how, focusing on work on the social function of the concept of knowing-how, testimony, demonstrating one's knowledge to other people, and epistemic injustice. I show how a conception of knowing-how as a form of 'downstream knowledge' can help to unify various phenomena discussed within this literature, and I also consider how these ideas might connect with issues concerning wisdom, moral knowledge, and moral testimony.

The author aims at an objective reinterpretation of L.Feuerbach's doctrine and refuting the prejudices that exist in the historical and philosophical tradition in relation to the Feuerbachian philosophical system. Through an analysis of Feuerbach's views on such concepts as the historical and philosophical paradigm, the relation of man to the world, dialectics and religion, the author concludes that these elements of Feuerbach's doctrine were distorted by K. Marx, F. Engels and their followers. The author demonstrates through Feuerbachian responses to 11 (...) theses of Marx by H.M. Sass that some aspects of Feuerbach's philosophy remain relevant to philosophy, and that the founders of Marxism distorted Feuerbach's doctrine in order to distinguish their philosophical system as more modern and true. (shrink)

Thetranslation Chern-Simons type three-formcoframe∧torsion on a Riemann-Cartan spacetime is related (by differentiation) to the Nieh-Yan fourform. Following Chandia and Zanelli, two spaces with nontrivial translational Chern-Simons forms are discussed. We then demonstrate, first within the classical Einstein-Cartan-Dirac theory and second in the quantum heat kernel approach to the Dirac operator, how the Nieh-Yan form surfaces in both contexts, in contrast to what has been assumed previously.

The author discusses A. M. Dorozhkin’s ideas about constructing and typology of “trading zones”. He considers the influence of the substantive economics’ on science and education. The author argues that the universality of the institutions of reciprocity, redistribution and trade makes possible their stability in the process of institutionalization of scientific and educational activities.

We present a sequent calculus for the Grzegorczyk modal logic$\mathsf {Grz}$allowing cyclic and other non-well-founded proofs and obtain the cut-elimination theorem for it by constructing a continuous cut-elimination mapping acting on these proofs. As an application, we establish the Lyndon interpolation property for the logic$\mathsf {Grz}$proof-theoretically.

Is there a successful regress argument against intellectualism? In this article I defend the negative answer. I begin by defending Stanley and Williamson's (2001) critique of the contemplation regress against Noë (2005). I then identify a new argument – the employment regress – that is designed to succeed where the contemplation regress fails, and which I take to be the most basic and plausible form of a regress argument against intellectualism. However, I argue that the employment regress still fails. Drawing (...) on the previous discussion, I criticise further regress arguments given by Hetherington (2006) and Noë (2005). (shrink)

The series is devoted to the study of scientific and philosophical texts from the Classical and the Islamic world handed down in Arabic. Through critical text editions and monographs, it provides access to ancient scientific inquiry as it developed in a continuous tradition from Antiquity to the modern period. All editions are accompanied by translations and philological and explanatory notes.