The subject of the study is the institution of the ancient Indian dispute, the theoretical understanding of which has become part of the doctrines of all religious and philosophical schools. The “Shraman period” (5th century BC) is considered in detail, during which there was a sharp controversy between religious and philosophical schools, during which effective methods of conducting disputes “crystallized” and developed argumentative normativity. It is shown that the pluralism and diversity of ontological models that existed in the spiritual culture (...) of that time were reflected in the logical and epistemological doctrine - pramana-vada. Thus, in the first (pre-logical) period, epistemological and logical questions were raised within the framework of anvikshika, “the science of conducting public disputes,” and the widespread culture of philosophical disputes and their actual practice were completely determined by the original cultural context. The argumentative canon of the Nyaya school is analyzed, the categories of the Indian and Western European traditions are compared, illustrating the discussion, in particular, of the Aristotelian syllogistic and the Nyayak five-term syllogism, the doctrine of the dispute between the ancient Chinese school of the late Mohists and ancient Chrya. The productive methodological ideas of the polemical strategy of conducting philosophical disputes in late Buddhism are revealed, the role of the dual unity of proof and refutation, as well as examples, questions and tricks, as topoi of the ancient Indian culture of dispute is shown. (shrink)

The subject of the study. The article analyzes a number of aspects of Brahms' intermezzo Op. 119 No. 3 in order to detect non-classical tendencies manifested in the structure of the musical fabric and the principles of shaping in this work. Research methodology. In the course of the study, the method of holistic analysis was used, which includes consideration of the features of harmony, textural originality, thematic processes and form-forming patterns in the Brahms intermezzo Op. 119 No. 3. Elements of (...) comparative analysis were also applied. The scientific novelty of the work consists in the fact that as a result of the research it was possible to identify a number of non-classical qualities of Brahms' music, namely: the homogeneity of the sound fabric, a weak degree of differentiation of relief and background in texture, the absence of common forms of sound and passive fragments in musical form. The conceptual kinship of Brahms' principles of working with musical material with the technique of interpenetration of object and space, which became widespread in painting at the beginning of the XX century, was also discovered. Conclusions, the results obtained allow us to conclude that Brahms' intermezzo Op. 119 No. 3 implements a number of non-classical principles of working with musical material that anticipate the discoveries of composers of the Novovensky school. The results of the research can be used in the process of further study of Brahms' creativity and various theoretical aspects of music at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries, as well as in performing and pedagogical practice. (shrink)

The article attempts to develop the methodological foundations of innovation as a new field of scientific research that studies innovation in science, culture and society. On the basis of the philosophical and methodological approach, the term “innovation” is conceptualized. The definition of the concept of innovation proposed in the article is based on the “procedural approach” in the interpretation of innovation activity and at the same time emphasizes the significance of the final result in the form of a new product (...) that has commercial (social) value. In the context of modern trends in technogenic civilization, the essential features of innovative activity are revealed, its high degree of uncertainty and sensitivity to random changes and the influence of the external environment is revealed, it is shown that, along with organization, self-organization processes play an important role in it, manifested in complex, spontaneous changes accompanying the emergence of innovations. It is concluded that these features are evidence of the synergistic nature of innovation. The “rehabilitation” of synergetics is being carried out, which is considered as an ontological basis for building an innovative methodology. The article also formulates the basic principles of innovation methodology: openness of innovation, unity of linearity and non-linearity, probabilistic nature, the principle of systemic communication and organization, interdisciplinarity, the principle of relying on feedback. The possibility of creating an innovative method is being assessed. On this basis, the modern status of innovation is determined as an independent field of knowledge that has its own object, subject, functions, subjects, methodology, social mechanisms and the sphere of innovative consciousness, as well as other distinctive features of any particular science. A new approach to understanding the social and humanitarian expertise of high-risk innovative projects is proposed. (shrink)

This paper addresses the phenomenological experience of precarity and vulnerability in racialized gender-based violence from a structural perspective. Informed by Indigenous social theory and anti-colonial approaches to intergenerational trauma that link settler colonial violence to the modalities of stress-inducing social, institutional, and cultural violences in marginalized women’s lives, I argue that philosophical failures to understand trauma as a functional, organizational tool of settler colonial violence amplify the impact of traumatic experience on specific populations. It is trauma by design. I explore (...) this through the history of the concept of trauma and its connection to tragedy. I give a brief overview of prominent theories of trauma and contrast these with the work of Indigenous feminist scholar Dian Million (2013), who highlights functional complicity of settler colonial institutions in shaping accounts of trauma in the west. I begin the piece with an important illustration of the kinds of lives and experiences that call for a politicized understanding of trauma in anti-colonial feminist theory. I end by offering an expansive notion of structural trauma that is a methodological pivot for conducting trauma-based gender-based violence research in a decolonial context, which calls for an end to narratives of trauma that are severed from the settler colonial project of Native land dispossession and genocide. [Volume 23, no.1]. (shrink)

In recent years postcolonial and decolonial feminisms have become increasingly salient in philosophy, yet they are often deployed as conceptual stand-ins for generalized feminist critiques of eurocentrism (without reference to the material contexts anti-colonial feminisms emanate from), or as a platform to re-center internal debates between dominant European theories/ists under the guise of being conceptually ‘decolonized’. By contrast, this article focuses on the specific contexts, issues and lifeworld concerns that ground anti-colonial feminisms and provides a brief survey of the literature. (...) Because the terms implicated in the analysis (Third World, transnational, women of color, postcolonial, decolonial and indigenous feminisms) are highly contested on their own, I only provide provisional and non-foundational histories and definitions for the purposes of resisting philosophical appropriations of anti-colonial feminist theory. (shrink)

Intersectionality is a term that arose within the black feminist intellectual tradition for the purposes of identifying interlocking systems of oppression. As a descriptive term, it refers to the ways human identity is shaped by multiple social vectors and overlapping identity categories (such as sex, race, class) that may not be readily visible in single-axis formulations of identity, but which are taken to be integral to robustly capture the multifaceted nature of human experience. As a diagnostic term, it captures the (...) confluence of power and domination on the social construction of identity in order to remedy concrete harms that result from this convergence. It is not a prescriptive methodology or closed system of analysis, but rather an open-ended hermeneutic lens through which interconnected systems of oppression can come into focus in the fight for social justice. (shrink)

A common approach for measuring the effectiveness of an education system or a school is the estimation of the impact that school interventions have on students’ academic performance. However, the latest trends aim to extend the focus beyond students’ acquisition of knowledge and skills, and to consider aspects such as well-being in the academic context. For this reason, the 2015 edition of the international assessment system PISA incorporated a new tool aimed at evaluating the socio-affective variables related to the well-being (...) of students. It is based on a definition focused on the five dimensions proposed in PISA theoretical framework: cognitive, psychological, social, physical and material. The main purpose of this study is to identify the well-being components that significantly affect student academic performance and to estimate the magnitude of school effects on the well-being of students in OECD countries, the school effect being understood as the ability of schools to increase subjective student well-being. To achieve this goal, we analyzed the responses of 234,000 students from thirty-five OECD countries to PISA 2015 questionnaires. Specifically, we considered non-cognitive variables in the questionnaires and student performance in science. The results indicated that the cognitive well-being dimension, composed of enjoyment of science, self-efficacy and instrumental motivation, as well as the test anxiety all had a consistent relationship with student performance across countries. In addition, the school effect, estimated through a two-level hierarchical linear model, in terms of student well-being was systematically low. While the school effect accounted for approximately 25% of the variance in the results for the cognitive dimension, only 5-9% of variance in well-being indicators was attributable to it. This suggests that the influence of school on student welfare is weak, and the effect is similar across countries. The present study contributes to the general discussion currently underway about the definition of well-being and the connection between well-being and achievement. The results highlighted two complementary concerns: there is a clear need to promote socio-emotional education in schools, and it is important to develop a rigorous framework for well-being assessment. The implications of the results and proposals for future studies are discussed. (shrink)

The importance of emotions is supported by many authors of the ethics of care in contrast to the rationalistic paradigm of justice. However, the reference to the emotions remains generic. By focusing on three paradigmatic typologies (care out of love, care work, and care of the distant other), I propose to investigate this aspect further, and distinguish between the different emotions that motivate care (such as love, compassion, and generosity). I will try, first, to offer a reflection on which emotions (...) are likely to motivate ethical action within an ethics of care; second, to survey different potential obstacles to these emotions and propose how they might be overcome to more successfully achieve good care and ethical action. (shrink)

Fictions feature prominently in several of Hume’s important arguments about the external world. For example, Hume is clear that there would be no belief in the continued existence of objects, were it not for the fictions that are causally responsible for effecting this belief. Interpreters of Hume on the topic of fiction generally argue that the formation of fiction requires the possession of general ideas and the use of language. Drawing upon recent attempts in the literature to advance this claim, (...) I offer reasons for why this general approach is undesirable. By examining Hume’s comments on the capabilities of children, this paper advances a novel approach to the topic of fictions in Hume’s philosophy that separates the matter of fiction formation from the use of language, arguing instead that it is not the use of language that establishes fictions; fictions exert their influence upon the mind before the use of language becomes available to us. (shrink)

The paper argues in favour of a direct realist reading of Aquinas’s theory of intelligible species, in opposition to the recent representationalist challenges. In order to secure the direct realist reading, the paper follows three steps: a short description of Aquinas’s process of cognition, a survey of the direct realist arguments and the analysis of the representationalist interpretation. The final step consists of investigating the representationalist reading as it is suggested by two scholars, Claude Panaccio in Aquinas on Intellectual Representation (...) and Robert Pasnau in Theories of Cognition in the Latter Middle Ages. Thus, the paper can be construed as a reply to these two authors, due to the thorough attention paid to their argumentative trails. With regard to Panaccio’s reading the paper focuses on the identity between the intelligible species and the essence of the extra-mental object and argues that Panaccio understands identity in a very narrow sense. Concerning Pasnau’s line of reasoning the focus is on the primum cognitum status of the intelligible species, and the main argument is that intelligible species is understood by Aquinas as the quo and not the quod of cognition. As the paper shows, neither one, nor the other interpretation poses a threat to the direct realist reading of Aquinas’s intelligible species. (shrink)

Previous research has found that funding disparities are driven by applications’ final impact scores and that only a portion of the black/white funding gap can be explained by bibliometrics and topic choice. Using National Institutes of Health R01 applications for council years 2014–2016, we examine assigned reviewers’ preliminary overall impact and criterion scores to evaluate whether racial disparities in impact scores can be explained by application and applicant characteristics. We hypothesize that differences in commensuration—the process of combining criterion scores into (...) overall impact scores—disadvantage black applicants. Using multilevel models and matching on key variables including career stage, gender, and area of science, we find little evidence for racial disparities emerging in the process of combining preliminary criterion scores into preliminary overall impact scores. Instead, preliminary criterion scores fully account for racial disparities—yet do not explain all of the variability—in preliminary overall impact scores. (shrink)

There is a growing trend across North America of women being criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes. Rather than being a series of aberrations resulting from institutional failures, we argue that this trend is part of a colonial strategy of administrative violence aimed at women of color and Native women across Turtle Island. We consider a range of medical and legal practices constituting gender-based administrative violence, and we argue that they are the result of non-accidental and systematic production of population-level harms (...) that cannot be disentangled from the goals of ongoing settler occupation and dispossession of Indigenous lands. While white feminist narratives of gender-based administrative violence in Latin America function to distance the places where such violence occurs from the ‘liberal democratic’ settler nation-states of the U.S. and Canada, we hold that administrative forms of reproductive violence against Latin American women are structurally connected to efforts in the U.S. and Canada to criminalize women of color and Indigenous women for their reproductive outcomes. The purpose of these systemically produced harms is to sustain cultures of gender-based violence in support of settler colonial configurations of power. (shrink)

Technological shifts within the video game industry have enabled many games to evolve into platforms for repeated expenditure, rather than a one-time purchase product. Monetising a game as a service is challenging, and there is concern that some monetisation strategies may constitute unfair or exploitative practices which are not adequately covered by existing law. We asked 1104 players of video games to describe a time when they had been exposed to transactions which were perceived to be misleading, aggressive or unfair. (...) We found 35 separate techniques over eight domains: game dynamics designed to drive spending, product not meeting expectations, monetisation of basic quality of life, predatory advertising, in-game currency, pay to win, general presence of microtransactions and other. Notably, several of these reported practices seem to not align with existing UK consumer protection regulations. We discuss this potential misalignment, as well as the implications of identifying what players believe to be problematic monetisation techniques. (shrink)

In 1995, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Society for Engineering Education receiveda grant from the National Science Foundation to undertake a project aimed both at assisting Russian philosophers in developingcurriculum on engineering ethics and learning how context affects the teaching of engineering ethics. The project began with threeRussian philosophers visiting the U.S. to observe how we teach engineering ethics. The American members of the project then madethree visits to Russia to be part of three (...) different workshops that brought together Russian professors from a variety of disciplines toexchange ideas about teaching ethics among themselves and with the Americans. During these visits, three of the Russians asked if we thought American philosophers would be interested in hearing about the Russian situation. We were delighted by the question (especially since we had become fascinated with the differences in Russian ideas about ethics), and responded with enthusiasm for the idea of their writing such an article. The article that follows is the result of their endeavor to explain how business ethics issues arise in Russia. Among other things, the article reveals how Russia's history and the experiences of Russians under the U.S.S.R create a context extremely different from our own, for thinking about (and teaching) business ethics.-Deborah G. Johnson and Vivian WeiI. (shrink)

While separate pieces of research found parents offer toddlers cues to express that they are joking and pretending, and that toddlers and preschoolers understand intentions to joke and pretend, it is not yet clear whether parents and toddlers consider joking and pretending to be distinct concepts. This is important as distinguishing these two forms of non-literal acts could open a gateway to understanding the complexities of the non-literal world, as well as the complexities of intentions in general. Two studies found (...) parents offer explicit cues to help 16- to 24-month-olds distinguish pretending and joking. Across an action play study and a verbal play study parents showed more disbelief and less belief through their actions and language when joking versus pretending. Similarly, toddlers showed less belief through their actions, and older toddlers showed less belief through their language. Toddlers' disbelief could be accounted for by their response to parents' language and actions. Thus, these studies reveal a mechanism by which toddlers learn to distinguish joking and pretending. Parents offer explicit cues to distinguish these intentions, and toddlers use these cues to guide their own behaviors, which in turn allows toddlers to distinguish these intentional contexts. (shrink)

The article discusses the challenges, benefits, and risks that, from a bioethical perspective, arise because of the the development of eHealth projects. The conceptual framework of the research is based on H. Jonas’ principles of the ethics of responsibility and B.G. Yudin’s anthropological ideas on human beings as agents who constantly change their own boundaries in the “zone of phase transitions.” The article focuses on the events taking place in the zone of phase transitions between humans and machines in eHealth. (...) It is shown that for innovative practices related to digitalization and datafication in medicine, it is needed to rethink central bioethical concepts of personal autonomy and informed consent. In particular, the concept of broad or open informed consent is discussed, which allows the idea of moral responsibility in the field of biomedical technologies to be extended to events of uncertain future. The authors draw attention to the problems associated with the emergence of new autonomous subjects/agents in relationship between doctors and patients. The humanization of machines occurring in eHealth is accompanied by a counter trend – the formation of conceptions and practices of the quantified self. There emerges the practices of self-care and bio-power caused by the datafication and digitization of personality. The authors conclude that bioethics should proactively develop norms for the evolving interaction between doctor and patients. (shrink)

Introduction. The article raises the problem of categorical expression of forming and preserving in active reproduction of the ecological worldview of the modern era man, oriented on building optimal human relations with the constantly technologicalizing and digitalizing world. The elaboration of the content of the main terms of the problem under consideration is reflected not only in the analysis of modern scientific and public discourse on the subject, but also in the materials of the All-Russian scientific-practical conference “Modern materials and (...) methods of solving environmental problems of post-industrial agglomeration”, in particular, the section “Humanitarian bases of nature-saving activity”. The purpose of the study is to clarify the semantic content of the concepts “ecological worldview”, “ecological consciousness”, “ecological thinking”, “environmentalism” in the modern scientific and public discourse not only in its published representation, but also in the praxis of the main ideas and key theses of the reports of the participants of the humanitarian section of the environmental conference, reflecting in a discussion format the scientific demand, the degree of clarity, dynamics and problematization of the interdisciplinary development of the categories of ecothematics. Methods. The methodological foundations of the research are related to clarifying the above concepts, their semantic emphases in scientific discourse, as well as eco-rhetoric in the Internet space. In addition, in order to reflect the key theses and main ideas of the papers, the methods of gen- eral scientific order (analysis, synthesis, abstraction, etc.) are used. Scientific novelty of the research. The content of the terms “ecological worldview”, “ecological consciousness”, “ecological thinking”, “environmentalism” in theoretical scientific and modern public discourse in their correlation with scientific interdisciplinary practices of the conference discussion platforms has been clarified. Results. A discursive field has been formed in the public Internet space, which can be thematically designated as “ecologization of digitalization”, according to which the latest digital technologies are capable of preventing and solving some environmental problems. In addition, it can be argued that the terms “ecological consciousness” and “ecology of consciousness” mean not only a careful attitude to natural resources, but also responsibility for one’s actions and a positive attitude to the world in the form of proactive thinking (instead of reactive) based on the worldview of ecohumanism and holism. Conclusions. Since the middle of the last century, domestic and foreign philosophical and scientific literature has noted the need for active formation of an ecological worldview, expressed in the preserving and reproducing the values of human concern for nature, society, culture and self. Today, in the conditions of aggravation of environmental risks, their scientific and public discussions, and the search for ways to mitigate them, the issue of changing the paradigm of thinking and activity of modern man in favor of a caring, careful and responsible attitude to himself and the surrounding world is actualized. In this regard, in the discourses discussed above, there is a demand for mental attitudes and everyday practices in which pro-ecological activity would be manifested as an attribute of an environmentally friendly person (homo ecologicus). The semantic field of the Internet space on ecothematics correlates with the scientific interdisciplinary discourses of conference discussion platforms, thus also reflecting the semantic demand for new categories in various discourses and scientific practices. (shrink)

We investigated humor as a context for learning about abstraction and disbelief. More specifically, we investigated how parents support humor understanding during book sharing with their toddlers. In Study 1, a corpus analysis revealed that in books aimed at 1‐to 2‐year‐olds, humor is found more often than other forms of doing the wrong thing including mistakes, pretense, lying, false beliefs, and metaphors. In Study 2, 20 parents read a book containing humorous and non‐humorous pages to their 19‐to 26‐month‐olds. Parents used (...) a significantly higher percentage of high abstraction extra‐textual utterances (ETUs) when reading the humorous pages. In Study 3, 41 parents read either a humorous or non‐humorous book to their 18‐to 24‐month‐olds. Parents reading the humorous book made significantly more ETUs coded for a specific form of high abstraction: those encouraging disbelief of prior utterances. Sharing humorous books thus increases toddlers' exposure to high abstraction and belief‐based language. (shrink)

The subject of the analysis of this paper is the Andean civilization view by the Peruvian author of the XVI century Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, a Quechua Indian by origin, who became a Catholic monk, as well as a translator and mediator between two civilizations: European, personalized by Spanish administration and Catholic Church present in the conquered lands, and Andean civilization, represented by local population speaking native Quechua and other Native American languages. The collision of two worlds is clearly (...) visible in the Chronicle «El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno», which belongs to this author. This literary monument is an invaluable document because it describes in Medieval Spanish a disappearing world left behind, due to the lack of writing, having only artifacts of material culture and proto-hieroglyphic recording tools. The main methods of this research – analysis, synthesis, generalization. Analyzing the statements of the author of the Chronicle, who is trying to reconcile the two worlds, it is possible to recreate the panorama of the life of Andean society of that era and the sociolinguistic situation developed in it. The novelty of the study can be considered the combination of cultural and sociolinguistic approaches in the analysis of the material. The conclusion reached by the authors of the article is that the death of the Andean civilization was inevitable under the onslaught of the European one. But the Andean world, native languages and culture have not disappeared, and today are being revived, since the Peruvian society has formed a request to restore the social functions of native languages in full. (shrink)

In recent decades, affective scientists have begun using concepts and tools from dynamical systems theory (DST) to characterise emotional processes. This article considers how the concept of emergence might be used to develop this approach. Emotions are explicated as ‘emergent products’ that diachronically constrain the operations of their parts in virtue of feedback loops (a classical feature of nonlinear dynamical systems). The explication is shown to be broadly consistent with what is sometimes called ‘pattern’ emergence. Casting emotions as emergent patterns (...) is shown to shed light on a major conceptual and empirical challenge emotion theorists have faced over the past century: identifying and measuring the presence of emotional episodes (Lindquist et al., 2012; Hollenstein & Lanteigne, 2014), dubbed here the ‘boundary problem’ (following Colombetti, 2014). In particular, the explication suggests seeing the emotional ‘signatures’ thought to accompany emotional episodes as fragile and context-bound: likely to hold under a relevant class of interventions (Woodward, 2005), but not without exception beyond that class. This in turn may suggest a need to significantly revise the statistical methods currently used to measure the presence of emotional ‘signatures’. The casting of emotions as emergent patterns also functions as a further case study supporting the value of ‘pattern emergence’ (Winning & Bechtel, 2019) as a powerful vehicle for characterising the objects of investigation — compound and context-sensitive — ubiquitous in the biological sciences. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of understanding the meaning of music on the example of rock music. The purpose of the article is to find a criterion for such an understanding. For this purpose, the question is considered as to what musical meaning is. Since rock compositions usually have a short length and one explicit melody, it can be said that musical understanding is the grasping of this melody. The question arises as to what it means to grab a (...) melody, and whether it means the ability to sing it. Not necessarily, it turns out–rather, it means capturing its pattern. The idea that music is a language is rejected: music does not have external meaning. The article discusses several examples of the “translation” of one melody into another style or mode. In such a translation the hyletic data changes, but the pattern remains. This is associated with the preservation of musical meaning and musical thought. The most important criterion of musical understanding is the existential experience of the melody. To understand music, to grasp its meaning, the listener must be open, that is, be ready to perceive music as an aesthetic object. At the moment of listening, music is a saturated phenomenon, because it completely fills its horizon. Any other, alternative music is impossible. The problem of corporeality in the perception of music is examined. It is especially important in rock music, which usually has a clear rhythm. The pattern of the melody also has a spatial character, which refers to corporality. Here we can talk about a certain “resonance” of external music with the inner musical world of the listener. (shrink)

En el panorama creativo del siglo XXI abundan las producciones apocalípticas, muchas veces protagonizadas por vampiros y zombis. En algunas de ellas, se elaboran toda una serie de resignificaciones religiosas, vinculando el cristianismo con el vampirismo y lo zombi. En este contexto, la figura de María Magdalena aparece, en ocasiones, reformulada con importantes connotaciones feministas. Así sucede tanto en la película Jesucristo Cazavampiros (Lee Demarbre, Jesuschrist Vampire Hunter, 2001) como en el cortometraje Zombie Jesus (Carla Siegle, 2014). Ambas producciones, a (...) las que se unen otras para demostrar que las mismas no son una excepción, presentan un conocimiento tanto de las Escrituras como de los estudios procedentes de la teología feminista, aspectos que configuran el foco principal de atención en el presente estudio. (shrink)

In response to the grim realities of the present world Jewish thought has not tended to retreat into eschatological fantasy, but rather to project utopian visions precisely on to the present moment, envisioning redemptions that are concrete, immanent, and necessarily political in nature. In difficult times and through shifting historical contexts, the messianic hope in the Jewish tradition has functioned as a political vision: the dream of a peaceful kingdom, of a country to return to, or of a leader who (...) will administer justice among the nations. Against this background, it is unsurprising that Jewish messianism in modern times has been transposed, and lives on in secular political movements and ideologies. The purpose of this book is to contribute to the deeper understanding of the relationship between Jewish thought, utopia, and revolution, by taking a fresh look at its historical and religious roots. We approach the issue from several perspectives, with differences of opinion presented both in regard to what Jewish tradition is, and how to regard utopia and revolution. These notions are multifaceted, comprising aspects such as political messianism, religious renewal, Zionism, and different forms of Marxist and Anarchistic movements. (shrink)

Considerable attention has focused on studying reviewer agreement via inter-rater reliability (IRR) as a way to assess the quality of the peer review process. Inspired by a recent study that reported an IRR of zero in the mock peer review of top-quality grant proposals, we use real data from a complete range of submissions to the National Institutes of Health and to the American Institute of Biological Sciences to bring awareness to two important issues with using IRR for assessing peer (...) review quality. First, we demonstrate that estimating local IRR from subsets of restricted-quality proposals will likely result in zero estimates under many scenarios. In both data sets, we find that zero local IRR estimates are more likely when subsets of top-quality proposals rather than bottom-quality proposals are considered. However, zero estimates from range-restricted data should not be interpreted as indicating arbitrariness in peer review. On the contrary, despite different scoring scales used by the two agencies, when complete ranges of proposals are considered, IRR estimates are above 0.6 which indicates good reviewer agreement. Furthermore, we demonstrate that, with a small number of reviewers per proposal, zero estimates of IRR are possible even when the true value is not zero. (shrink)

Is atheist spirituality an oxymoron and, if so, did Soviet citizens brought up in a definitively atheist environment have no spiritual pursuits? The author asks this question, drawing on Dostoyevsky’s dark prophecy and interrogating Yuri Levada’s model of a Soviet simple person as a distinct anthropological type. Taking on board Riegel’s concept of political religion and testing Marxism–Leninism as a source of wisdom for the Soviet nonbelievers, the author seeks to uncover a version of spirituality compatible with Soviet-style atheism. The (...) discussion also involves the examination of Russian literary tradition and Borodina’s philosophical theory of spirituality, which accords with Sharafutdinova accounting for the phenomenon of inner exile in the late Soviet period and Bekmetov’s reminder that Buddhist world-view had a significant influence on Russian cultural metalanguage. (shrink)

Donatist preachers used Scripture to accredit their own church and discredit the rival one. But Catholics and Donatists shared the same scriptural background, and so the same verses were sometimes referred to opposing points of view. The congregation, disoriented, took advantage of spatial proximity of the two communities and made their way back and forth between one and the other church to ask questions and get answers. This gave rise to a kind of living intertextuality and to a virtually endless (...) hermeneutics. (shrink)

All of a sudden, religious awareness has started to regain a relevance it had lost among Europeans. It is not that it had disappeared from European societies, but rather that it existed at a discreet secondary level. However, Europe is less secular and more post-secular than many would like to admit. The liberal model of freedom of conscience, it is, the separation between justice, the norms of political and institutional coexistence, and the whole model of toleration is being questioned from (...) all sides, and this essay will focus on one of these questions. If we take the political liberalism of Rawls as the paradigm of the liberal model, we can see that it gives rise to variations posing challenges that are more profound than they initially appear. This essay will look at one of these variations, raised by Martha Nussbaum, which is based on the demand for equality for believers underpinned by the idea of respect, which in her view is more desirable than toleration alone. (shrink)

Hallucination lies at an intriguing border between psychiatry and philosophy. Although Behrendt & Young (B&Y) tie their proposal to Kantian transcendental idealism, other philosophical positions are equally consistent. Cognition is underconstrained by reality not only in hallucination but also in autism and dreaming. Sensory underconstraint is insufficient to encompass schizophrenia. There is also a breakdown in integrative capacity on the cognitive side. From a wider clinical perspective than schizophrenia, there can be underconstraint or overconstraint in sensory and cognitive functionalities.

The aim of this paper is to show how, despite the nowadays foreseen end of metaphysics, this discipline is still necessary and ineliminable regardless of its insufficient results and the impossibility of achieving its owns tasks. Schopenhauer and Heidegger’s views will help us bring this old Kantian thesis up to date. In doing so, the deep connection between.

The dynamics of ancient civilisations according to credited historians can be explained by means of a simple linear time-invariant feedback model whose loop only consists of a first-order process and a pure time delay. It is shown that, despite its simplicity, this model can give rise to a variety of responses, either oscillatory or aperiodic, such as those envisaged by A. Toynbee. Since modern civilisations are characterised by fast parameter variations, their description calls instead for a time-variant model. Simulations with (...) the linear parameter-varying model obtained from the aforementioned LTI model by letting its parameter vary are carried out to show the influence of different scenarios on the system response. Even if this model is elementary, it is believed that it may serve as a stimulating “tool for thought” in the ever-popular debate on the growth and decline of civilisations. (shrink)

This article deals with the strategies for constructing and handling knowledge in a multinational business context. The present case study focuses on the observation of a corporation in the energy production sector. The multiple levels of expert knowledge that characterize the multinational corporation activities are regulated by knowledge flows affecting all global regions where the multinational operates. The article describes and comments on these flows of knowledge, how they involve global processes of relocation of knowledge, and discusses the creation of (...) new forms of cultural interdependence. (shrink)

Across Europe, micro firms (SMEs with up to 10 employees) account for the vast majority of business activities. Supporting micro firms in the transition towards sustainability is essential: many small steps will result in a big leap. To this scope knowledge is needed on the specific challenges encountered by micro firms in the region they operate in. The research presented here offers a contribution to this knowledge. It explores the perception of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), its rewards and difficulties by (...) micro firms in Frisia, Groningen and Drenthe - the three Northern provinces of The Netherlands. (shrink)

Contrary to an understanding of the struggle against gender violence as placing men and women in opposition to one another, victims have always been supported by both women and men. To prevent violence is important to know not only which message should be transmitted but also how the dialogue should unfold, and the characteristics of the people engaging in that dialogue. Because of the existing association between attraction and violence in our society, the unity of the language of ethics and (...) the language of desire in such dialogue has become a key element in the struggle against gender violence. This study identifies the strong presence of communicative acts that unify these languages in the women and men who are successful in this struggle. The opposition to violence that they defend guide their own desires, which are transmitted through their communicative acts to the people around them. (shrink)

The paper deals with the changes in the sense of synchronicity and simultaneity connected with the transformations in the structure of society. It examines and criticizes the modern concept of absolute chronology, understood as an objective temporal reference common to all observers. This notion is compared with the relative and flexible (but neither objective nor generalizable) forms of synchronization of different societies. The paper discusses finally the hypothesis that contemporary society is realizing a more complex and recursive form of temporality, (...) that questions the modern ideal of synchronicity. This temporality is connected with recent developments in telematics. (shrink)

This article takes up the commonplace antagonism between ‘second wave’ lesbian feminism and ‘third wave’ queer theory and politics, and argues that the antagonism itself is both historically and politically reductive. First, I make the case that ‘third wave’ queer theory actually shares its central concern – namely, accountability for intra-group inequalities – with lesbian feminism. However, I argue that ‘third wave’ queer theories ultimately founder in their bid for a more reflexive political praxis by tending to hold others – (...) lesbian feminists – accountable for ongoing inequalities rather than grappling with them directly. By contrast, I show that lesbian feminists from the late 1970s to the late 1980s developed a reparative politics that succeeds where ‘third wave’ theories stumble by developing relationships of mutual accountability around issues of race and racism, and by establishing processes by which to repair these relationships when they founder. I conclude by arguing that a fuller attention to the history of lesbian feminism, in fact, offers important resources for feminists and queers dealing with issues of intra-group marginalization, such as transphobia, in the present. (shrink)

The philosophy of culture and the philosophy of history were the popular topics of the developing Russian history of philosophy in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the following article, A. I. Herzen’s socio-cultural project is examined and compared with the Slavophiles’Christian communal socialism. Herzen’s type of socialism appears to be a specific variant of the Russian national culture as the Slavophiles depicted.