In this paper, semi-Post algebras are introduced and investigated. The generalized Post algebras are subcases of semi-Post algebras. The so called primitive Post constants constitute an arbitrary partially ordered set, not necessarily connected as in the case of the generalized Post algebras examined in [3]. By this generalization, semi-Post products can be defined. It is also shown that the class of all semi-Post algebras is closed under these products and that every semi-Post algebra is a semi-Post product of some generalized (...) Post algebras. (shrink)

Semi-Post algebras of any type T being a poset have been introduced and investigated in [CR87a], [CR87b]. Plain Semi-Post algebras are in this paper singled out among semi-Post algebras because of their simplicity, greatest similarity with Post algebras as well as their importance in logics for approximation reasoning ([Ra87a], [Ra87b], [RaEp87]). They are pseudo-Boolean algebras generated in a sense by corresponding Boolean algebras and a poset T. Every element has a unique descending representation by means of elements in a corresponding (...) Boolean algebra and primitive Post constants which form a poset T. An axiomatization and another characterization, subalgebras, homomorphisms, congruences determined by special filters and a representability theory of these algebras, connected with that for Boolean algebras, are the subject of this paper. (shrink)

Semi-Post algebras have been introduced and investigated in [6]. This paper is devoted to semi-Post subalgebras and homomorphisms. Characterization of semi-Post subalgebras and homomorphisms, relationships between subalgebras and homomorphisms of semi-Post algebras and of generalized Post algebras are examined.

Hồ Mạnh Tùng và Hồ Mạnh Toàn đều là các nhà nghiên cứu trẻ trong lĩnh vực khoa học xã hội ở độ tuổi dưới 30. Mặc dù mới tham gia nghiên cứu khoa học chưa lâu, nhưng 2 anh em nhà họ Hồ đã có thành tích khoa học ấn tượng.

Ortadoğu bölgesindeki çatışma ve istikrarsızlık ortamının ardında İran - Suudi Arabistan rekabeti bulunmaktadır. Bununla birlikte bu rekabetin politik doğası, çoğunlukla ana akım medya tarafından aşırı derecede basitleştirilmiştir. Benzer biçimde İran – Suudi Arabistan rekabetinin içindeki kimlik politikaları üzerine yazılmış literatürün büyük bir kısmı bölgesel istikrarsızlıkların kökeni ve kaynağını ağırlıklı olarak tarihlerinin genel ve betimleyici bir hesabını sunmuş veya oyuncuların iktidar mücadeleleri içerisinde Sünni ve Şii İslam’ın politikleşmesine ve manipülasyonuna odaklanmıştır. Halen mevcut olan kimlik politikaları üzerine teorileri sentezleyen, yani Primordializm, araçsallık, (...) ve sosyal inşacılık, bu araştırmanın teorik modelini oluşturmaktadır. Bu modelde, mezhepsel kimlik – Ortadoğu toplumlarının ve yanı sıra bölgesel tarihin bir gerçeği olarak – sadece politik süreçler üzerine muazzam etkileri ölçülmedi, ayrıca politik uygulamalarda her düzeydeki politik aktörlerin kullanımıyla karşılaştırılmıştır. (shrink)

Among contemporary liberal political theorists in the West, there appears to be a standoff between two camps. One camp promotes tighter social bonds through collective responsibility and patriotic fellow-feeling while the other insists on the need for relaxed social bonds through respect for individual freedom. This essay shows how two Vietnamese thinkers—Ho Chi Minh (1872–1969) and Nguyen Manh Tuong (1909–1997)—can help move this intractable debate about collective responsibility and individual freedom beyond statements of principle to a more pragmatic (...) discussion of what should be done to maintain a healthy polity. They present an alternative to the static standoff, arguing that dynamic oscillation between two activities can forge national fraternal solidarity while also respecting individual freedom when the needs arise: ‘criticism and self-criticism' which tightens social bonds, and ‘liberal self-exploration' which relaxes social bonds. (shrink)

This essay offers a discussion and contextualisation of a series of letters exchanged between Jordi Cat and Paul Feyerabend from 1989 to 1994. These letters provide insights into Feyerabend’s later thought on a variety of themes including quantum holism, the disunity of science, the development of logical empiricism, and science activism. In doing so, we provide some original analysis and exegesis of Feyerabend’s evolving views on scientific methodology and quantum mechanics by focusing on Feyerabend’s changing attitudes towards Bohm, Bohr, and (...) his eventual colleague Hans Primas and his later sympathies with the algebraic approach. We also highlight Feyerabend’s role in the growth of the Disunity of Science movement and how he connected disunity to practical considerations in the philosophy of action. (shrink)

Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those values; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Re-tweets, citation rates, ranked lists of best schools, and Grade Point Averages. We are vulnerable to value capture because of the competitive advantage that such crisp and clear expressions of value have in (...) our private reasoning and our public justification. There is, however, a price. In value capture, we take a central component of our autonomy — our ongoing deliberation over the exact articulation of our values — and we outsource it. And the metrics to which we outsource usually engineered for the interests of some external force, like a large-scale institution’s interest in cross-contextual comprehensibility and quick aggregability. That outsourcing cuts off one of the key benefits to personal deliberation. In value capture, we no longer adjust our values and their articulations in light of own rich experience of the world. Our values should often be carefully tailored to our particular selves or our small-scale communities, but in value capture, we buy our values off the rack. In some cases – like decreasing CO2 emissions – the costs of non-tailored values are outweighed by the benefit of precise collective coordination. In other cases, like in our aesthetic lives, they are not. This suggests that we should want different values suited to different scales. We should want value federalism. Some values are perhaps best pursued at the largest-scale level, others at smaller scales. The problem occurs when we exhibit an excess preference for the largest-scale values – when we consistently let the universal metrics swamp our quieter interests. (shrink)

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and programs are crucial tools for reducing social inequality within organizations. However, the recent decline in DEI practices and the inconsistencies found in existing research underscore the need for new theoretical approaches. This essay seeks to offer a fresh perspective on the strengths and limitations of DEI initiatives through the lens of granular interactions thinking theory. It posits that while DEI policies and programs generally create conditions conducive to greater value creation and improved adaptability (...) to changing environments and challenges, maintaining direction and operational certainty within an organization with high DEI demands significant energy investment. To sustain DEI and enhance its effectiveness, these policies need to go beyond simply increasing diversity and ensuring equal access to opportunities. They must also focus on empowering a diverse workforce to contribute to the organization’s success actively. Additionally, fostering a workplace culture that enhances members’ adaptive cognitive processing and skills can reduce the energy required to sustain DEI efforts, making these practices more sustainable in the long term. (shrink)

According to most accounts of trust, you can only trust other people (or groups of people). To trust is to think that another has goodwill, or something to that effect. I sketch a different form of trust: the unquestioning attitude. What it is to trust, in this sense, is to settle one’s mind about something, to stop questioning it. To trust is to rely on a resource while suspending deliberation over its reliability. Trust lowers the barrier of monitoring, challenging, checking, (...) and questioning. Trust sets up open pipelines between yourself and parts of the external world. Trust permits external resources to have a similar relationship to one as one’s internal cognitive faculties. This creates efficiency, but at the price of exquisite vulnerability. We must trust in this way because we are cognitively limited beings in a cognitively overwhelming world. Crucially, we can hold the unquestioning attitude towards objects and technologies. When I trust my climbing rope, I stop worrying about its reliability. When I trust my online calendaring system, I simply go to the events indicated, without question. But, one might worry, how could one ever hold such a normatively loaded attitude as trust towards mere objects? How could it ever make sense to feel betrayed by an object? Trust is our engine for expanding and outsourcing our agency — for binding external processes into our practical selves. Thus, we can be betrayed by our smartphones in the same way that we can be betrayed by our memory. When we trust, we try to make something a part of our agency, and we are betrayed when our part lets us down. To unquestioningly trust something is to let it in—to attempt to bring it inside one’s practical functioning. This suggests a new form of gullibility: agential gullibility, which occurs when agents too hastily and carelessly integrate external resources into their own agency. (shrink)

There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand, we care about getting things right. On the other hand, we demand autonomy. We want appreciators to arrive at their aesthetic judgments through their own cognitive efforts, rather than deferring to experts. These two demands seem to be in tension; after all, if we want to get the right judgments, we should defer to the judgments of experts. The best explanation, I suggest, is (...) that aesthetic appreciation is something like a game. When we play a game, we try to win. But often, winning isn’t the point; playing is. Aesthetic appreciation involves the same flipped motivational structure: we aim at the goal of correctness, but having correct judgments isn’t the point. The point is the engaged process of interpreting, investigating, and exploring the aesthetic object. Deferring to aesthetic testimony, then, makes the same mistake as looking up the answer to a puzzle, rather than solving it for oneself. The shortcut defeats the whole point. This suggests a new account of aesthetic value: the engagement account. The primary value of the activity of aesthetic appreciation lies in the process of trying to generate correct judgments, and not in having correct judgments. -/- *There is an audio version available: look for the Soundcloud link, below.*. (shrink)

The system of pedagogical colleges in Vietnam has made important contributions to the education system in general and to the pedagogical system in particular during the 1980s and 1990s. This study reviews the studies conducted and implemented in recent times according to different trends, especially the contributions that these school systems have made to education as well as to the development of the system itself. The findings highlight the historic contributions of teacher colleges, and they also face challenges that must (...) change to adapt to the new requirements of the pedagogy and education system. In addition, there are many issues that need to be researched and implemented not only related to the governance of each school but also associated with current systemic policy changes. (shrink)

This article is a review and critical evaluation of the New Testament expressions that speak about the faith of Jesus beginning with the much discussed pistis Iesou Christou 'faith of/in Jesus Christ'. It is divided into three parts: (1) statistics of the New Testament expressions regarding the faith of Jesus, (2) historico-exegetical considerations of pistis Iesou Christou as 'faith of Jesus Christ' or 'faith in Jesus Christ', and (3) other key phrases that imply the faith of Christ. This leads to (...) the concluding reflections that underline, among other points, the importance and relevance of recalling the biblical meaning of the term pistis as faith and faithfulness, so as to break the impasse in the debate over the New Testament evidence regarding the faith of Jesus. Precisely in this biblico-theological perspective it is preferable to speak not so much about the faith that Jesus had, as about the fact that, in his radical self-emptying, he has lived our faith (as one of us), so that through our living in faith we can participate in his faith.(Italian). Copyright of Miscellanea Francescana is the property of Pontificia Facolta Teologica S. Bonaventura and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (shrink)

Science provides us with representations of atoms, elementary particles, polymers, populations, genetic trees, economies, rational decisions, aeroplanes, earthquakes, forest fires, irrigation systems, and the world’s climate. It's through these representations that we learn about the world. This entry explores various different accounts of scientific representation, with a particular focus on how scientific models represent their target systems. As philosophers of science are increasingly acknowledging the importance, if not the primacy, of scientific models as representational units of science, it's important to (...) stress that how they represent plays a fundamental role in how we are to answer other questions in the philosophy of science. This entry begins by disentangling ‘the’ problem of scientific representation, before critically evaluating the current options available in the literature. (shrink)

We offer an account of the generic use of the term “porn”, as seen in recent usages such as “food porn” and “real estate porn”. We offer a definition adapted from earlier accounts of sexual pornography. On our account, a representation is used as generic porn when it is engaged with primarily for the sake of a gratifying reaction, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with the represented content. We demonstrate the usefulness of the concept of generic (...) porn by using it to isolate a new type of such porn: moral outrage porn. Moral outrage porn is representations of moral outrage, engaged with primarily for the sake of the resulting gratification, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with morally outrageous content. Moral outrage porn is dangerous because it encourages the instrumentalization of one’s empirical and moral beliefs, manipulating their content for the sake of gratification. Finally, we suggest that when using porn is wrong, it is often wrong because it instrumentalizes what ought not to be instrumentalized. (shrink)

Recent conversation has blurred two very different social epistemic phenomena: echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Members of epistemic bubbles merely lack exposure to relevant information and arguments. Members of echo chambers, on the other hand, have been brought to systematically distrust all outside sources. In epistemic bubbles, other voices are not heard; in echo chambers, other voices are actively undermined. It is crucial to keep these phenomena distinct. First, echo chambers can explain the post-truth phenomena in a way that epistemic (...) bubbles cannot. Second, each type of structure requires a distinct intervention. Mere exposure to evidence can shatter an epistemic bubble, but may actually reinforce an echo chamber. Finally, echo chambers are much harder to escape. Once in their grip, an agent may act with epistemic virtue, but social context will pervert those actions. Escape from an echo chamber may require a radical rebooting of one's belief system. (shrink)

The feeling of clarity can be dangerously seductive. It is the feeling associated with understanding things. And we use that feeling, in the rough-and-tumble of daily life, as a signal that we have investigated a matter sufficiently. The sense of clarity functions as a thought-terminating heuristic. In that case, our use of clarity creates significant cognitive vulnerability, which hostile forces can try to exploit. If an epistemic manipulator can imbue a belief system with an exaggerated sense of clarity, then they (...) can induce us to terminate our inquiries too early — before we spot the flaws in the system. How might the sense of clarity be faked? Let’s first consider the object of imitation: genuine understanding. Genuine understanding grants cognitive facility. When we understand something, we categorize its aspects more easily; we see more connections between its disparate elements; we can generate new explanations; and we can communicate our understanding. In order to encourage us to accept a system of thought, then, an epistemic manipulator will want the system to provide its users with an exaggerated sensation of cognitive facility. The system should provide its users with the feeling that they can easily and powerfully create categorizations, generate explanations, and communicate their understanding. And manipulators have a significant advantage in imbuing their systems with a pleasurable sense of clarity, since they are freed from the burdens of accuracy and reliability. I offer two case studies of seductively clear systems: conspiracy theories; and the standardized, quantified value systems of bureaucracies. (shrink)

No século XXI, o mundo se depara com grandes desafios políticos em relação à cultura, à sociedade e, especialmente, ao meio ambiente, não obstante desfrutar de brilhantes conquistas na ciência e na tecnologia, e, sobretudo, naeconomia. Observa-se que estesdesafios aumentam cada vez mais, e afetam a sobrevivência humana. Desse modo, buscar o desenvolvimento sustentável deve se tornar o objetivo central nas políticas de cada país.De acordo com a ideia de desenvolvimento social, segundo o pensamento de Ho Chi Minh, as decisões (...) políticas devem partir do povo, uma vez que é ele próprio o sujeito da história. Nas sendas deste pensamento, destacamos o papel do povo vietnamita, ligado profundamente ao desenvolvimento sustentável. Todo esforço deve consistir no trabalho de organizar os recursos do povopara desenvolver o país. Nesse sentido, o pensamento de Ho Chi Minh sobre a organização social não deve se valer, apenas, daqueles que participaram da revolução pela independência do Vietnã, mas deve se dar como força motriz para o desenvolvimento sustentável. Isto posto, temos que,junto àideia de desenvolvimento sustentável, é necessário desenvolver outros setores como a economia, a cultura e a sociedade, promovendo o estado de bem-estar social, elevando o Vietnã ao estágio de desenvolvimento de outros países.Nessa toada, o crescimento econômico deve refletir o progresso e a justiça social, traduzido em qualidade de vida e erradicação da pobreza. Assim, nosso objetivo neste artigo é investigar acerca das condições de aplicabilidade das ideias políticas de Ho Chi Minh sobre o papel do povo como sujeito do progresso, a fim de termos uma base de discussão sólida para a propositura de umprograma de desenvolvimento sustentável no Vietnã hoje. (shrink)

Art can be addressed, not just to individuals, but to groups. Art can even be part of how groups think to themselves – how they keep a grip on their values over time. I focus on monuments as a case study. Monuments, I claim, can function as a commitment to a group value, for the sake of long-term action guidance. Art can function here where charters and mission statements cannot, precisely because of art’s powers to capture subtlety and emotion. In (...) particular, art can serve as the vessel for group emotions, by making emotional content sufficiently public so as to be the object of a group commitment. Art enables groups to guide themselves with values too subtle to be codified. (shrink)

This collection begins with an engaging historical overview of Japanese aesthetics and offers contemporary multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives on the artistic and aesthetic traditions of Japan and the central themes in Japanese art and aesthetics.

Articles chiefly on the philosophy of Ramakrishna, 1836-1886, Hindu saint; includes articles on Hindu philosophy.

This study aims at putting characterology to the test of the epistemology presented in J.C. Pariente's work, Language and the Individual. This epistemology requires certain conditions for a knowledge of the individual to be valid, i.e., to be at the same time conceptual and adapted to its individual object. By following characterologists in their work, the study concludes that the characterological processes have met the conditions demanded by Pariente's epistemology. So, one cannot say that characterology, like history, "is not a (...) conceptual knowledge of its object". (shrink)

Previous discussions of Robb’s work on space and time have offered a philosophical focus on causal interpretations of relativity theory or a historical focus on his use of non-Euclidean geometry, or else ignored altogether in discussions of relativity at Cambridge. In this paper I focus on how Robb’s work made contact with those same foundational developments in mathematics and with their applications. This contact with applications of new mathematical logic at Göttingen and Cambridge explains the transition from his electron research (...) to his treatment of relativity in 1911 and finally to the axiomatic presentation in 1914 in terms of postulates. At the heart of Robb’s physical optics was the model of the light cone. The model underwent a transition from a working mechanical model in the Maxwellian Cambridge sense of a pedagogical and research tool to the semantic model, in the logical, model-theoretic sense. Robb tracked this transition from the 19th- to the 20th-century conception with the earliest use of the term ‘model’ in the new sense. I place his cone models in a genealogy of similar models and use their evolution to track how Robb’s physical researches were informed by his interest in geometry, logic and the foundations of mathematics. (shrink)

Scientific models are important, if not the sole, units of science. This thesis addresses the following question: in virtue of what do scientific models represent their target systems? In Part i I motivate the question, and lay out some important desiderata that any successful answer must meet. This provides a novel conceptual framework in which to think about the question of scientific representation. I then argue against Callender and Cohen’s attempt to diffuse the question. In Part ii I investigate the (...) ideas that scientific models are ‘similar’, or structurally morphic, to their target systems. I argue that these approaches are misguided, and that at best these relationships concern the accuracy of a pre-existing representational relationship. I also pay particular attention to the sense in which target systems can be appropriately taken to exhibit a ‘structure’, and van Fraassen’s recent argument concerning the pragmatic equivalence between representing phenomena and data. My next target is the idea that models should not be seen as objects in their own right, but rather what look like descriptions of them are actually direct descriptions of target systems, albeit not ones that should be understood literally. I argue that these approaches fail to do justice to the practice of scientific modelling. Finally I turn to the idea that how models represent is grounded, in some sense, in their inferential capacity. I compare this approach to anti-representationalism in the philosophy of language and argue that analogous issues arise in the context of scientific representation. Part iii contains my positive proposal. I provide an account of scientific representation based on Goodman and Elgin’s notion of representation-as. The result is a highly conventional account which is the appropriate level of generality to capture all of its instances, whilst remaining informative about the notion. I illustrate it with reference to the Phillips-Newlyn machine, models of proteins, and the Lotka-Volterra model of predator-prey systems. These examples demonstrate how the account must be understood, and how it sheds light on our understanding of how models are used. I finally demonstrate how the account meets the desiderata laid out at the beginning of the thesis, and outline its implications for further questions from the philosophy of science; not limited to issues surrounding the applicability of mathematics, idealisation, and what it takes for a model to be ‘true’. (shrink)

Games have a complex, and seemingly paradoxical structure: they are both competitive and cooperative, and the competitive element is required for the cooperative element to work out. They are mechanisms for transforming competition into cooperation. Several contemporary philosophers of sport have located the primary mechanism of conversion in the mental attitudes of the players. I argue that these views cannot capture the phenomenological complexity of game-play, nor the difficulty and moral complexity of achieving cooperation through game-play. In this paper, I (...) present a different account of the relationship between competition and cooperation. My view is a distributed view of the conversion: success depends on a large number of features. First, the players must achieve the right motivational state: playing for the sake of the struggle, rather than to win. Second, successful transformation depends on a large number of extra-mental features, including good game design, and social and institutional features. (shrink)

Twitter makes conversation into something like a game. It scores our communication, giving us vivid and quantified feedback, via Likes, Retweets, and Follower counts. But this gamification doesn’t just increase our motivation to communicate; it changes the very nature of the activity. Games are more satisfying than ordinary life precisely because game-goals are simpler, cleaner, and easier to apply. Twitter is thrilling precisely because its goals have been artificially clarified and narrowed. When we buy into Twitter’s gamification, then our values (...) shift from the complex and pluralistic values of communication, to the narrower quest for popularity and virality. Twitter’s gamification bears some resemblance with the phenomena of echo chambers and moral outrage porn. In all these phenomena, we are instrumentalizing our ends for hedonistic reasons. We have shifted our aims in an activity, not because the new aims are more valuable, but in exchange for extra pleasure. (shrink)

As mounting evidence highlights the human-driven extinction of avian species, reconnecting people with nature—particularly these feathered creatures—has become essential for engaging the public in conservation and the preservation of avian biodiversity. Paradoxically, heightened awareness of the benefits birds bring has fueled the rise of aviary bird-keeping for entertainment in Vietnam. This paper seeks to unravel the absurdity of bird keepers who claim to love nature and support conservation while engaging in practices that exploit and commodify birds for human interests. By (...) contrasting the values generated by birds in aviaries with those in their natural habitats, it underscores the role of an eco-deficit culture—or, more fundamentally, humanity's insatiable greed—in fostering this absurd form of "nature love.". (shrink)

Four distinguished authors have been brought together to produce this elegant study of a much-neglected figure. The book is divided into three sections: Neurath's biographical background and the economic and social context of his ideas; his theory of science; and the development of his role in debates on Marxist concepts of history and his own conception of science. Coinciding with the emerging serious interest in logical positivism, this timely publication will redress a current imbalance in the history and philosophy of (...) science. (shrink)

This article argues that public health campaigns have an ethical obligation to combat fat stigma, not mobilize it in the “war on obesity.” Fat stigma is conceptualized, and a review is undertaken of how pervasive fat stigma is across the world and across the lifespan. By reviewing the negative impacts of fat stigma on physical health, mental health, and health seeking behaviors, fat stigma is clearly identified as a social determinant of health. Considering the role of fat stigma in public (...) health, and the arguments made for using stigmatisation in public health campaigns to promote population health, it is concluded that it is a violation of public health ethics to use stigma as a tool in combatting fatness. The article concludes by making recommendations of how public health in New Zealand can combat, rather than reinforce, fat stigma. (shrink)

In this paper examines the roles and influence of China in the world and, mainly, in European Union. For a decade, Chinese investors have been looking for opportunities to buy european assets. Especially since the beginning of the 2008 crisis we observed an increase of investment activities of Chinese companies. During the crisis, cash troubled european companies due to loss of liquidity were forced to sell their shares at significant discount. Over time, with stabilizing the economic situation in Europe, European (...) companies asset prices seemingly ceased to be cheap, nevertheless a volume of Chinese FDI to Europe continued to grow. Our goal will be detailed insight into these investments and try to identify the benefits and risks of these investments. Moreover, this paper not only provide insight into economic development of Chinese FDI but also take into account political issues and background of these investment. As far as a methodology is concerned, the basis of our work will be comparing an impact of Chinese investments in European countries and their impact on economic development in selected countries. In particular, we are interested in the behavior of Chinese investors and their motivation to buy in Europe. At the same time it will also be interested in the motives of European companies that have decided to sell shares to new owners. Finally, we will also examine ways in which Chinese investors proceed with acquisitions in the EU. Data comes from Eurostat, the national statistical offices and stock market prices. We will also be examining the political influence on these countries individually and globally, therefore as part of the EU. Based on the gained information we will try to assess the current situation of China’s influence in the euro area and at the same time try to estimate its future impact. Finally, based on the detected information to analyze the results of our research. (shrink)

In his recent work, Dretske offers a new account of what it is for a mental state, in particular, a sensory experience, to be conscious. According to Dretske’sproposal, subject S’s experience of object O is conscious if and only if it makes S aware of O. This proposal is argued to be open to only two serious interpretations. The first takes it to mean that S’s experience of O is conscious if and only if it constitutes S’s awareness of O, (...) whereas the second takes it to mean that S’s experience of O is conscious if and only if it causes S’s awareness of O. It is argued that neither is a plausible way to understand the nature of state consciousness, because the constitutive interpretation implausibly denies the existence of unconscious veridical experiences, whereas the causal interpretation implausibly casts S’s veridical experience of O, rather than O or a certain external event involving O, as the relevant cause of S’s awareness of O. (shrink)

The underlying theme of this book is the analysis of Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism as a breakthrough movement that combines the fields of semiotics, theology, depth psychology, and philosophy in a new metaphysics of nature. Ecstatic naturalism provides a viable alternative to Peirce’s semiotic conception of the self and to Jaspers’ existential elucidation of Existenz.

This Element presents a philosophical exploration of the notion of scientific representation. It does so by focussing on an important class of scientific representations, namely scientific models. Models are important in the scientific process because scientists can study a model to discover features of reality. But what does it mean for something to represent something else? This is the question discussed in this Element. The authors begin by disentangling different aspects of the problem of representation and then discuss the dominant (...) accounts in the philosophical literature: the resemblance view and inferentialism. They find them both wanting and submit that their own preferred option, the so-called DEKI account, not only eschews the problems that beset these conceptions, but further provides a comprehensive answer to the question of how scientific representation works. (shrink)

This essay considers Deleuze and Guattari’s paradoxical claim that Marx’s critique of political economy implies as a universal history derived from the singular features of capitalism. In this critique, capitalism is defined by the commodity form, as a relationship of economic equivalence that replaces the bonds of dependence underlying other social formations. By negating relations of kinship and caste, capitalism reveals, a contrario, the universal foundation of other societies. As the “negative of all social formations,” capitalism conditions a universal history, (...) defined, retrospectively, from the singular standpoint of a society, based upon the negation of kinship and caste. In this universal history, moreover, the negation of capitalism is identified with the possibility of a new and equally singular form of society. In Anti-Oedipus, the latter is defined as a “schizophrenic” condition liberated from the commodity as well as from the bonds of dependence that constituted the universal foundation of earlier societies. (shrink)