This study lays the groundwork for a constructive contribution to the contemporary debate regarding divine action. It charts the history of debate about divine action among key Anglophone philosophers of religion, and observes that they were largely committed to this erroneous understanding of divine action as a closed concept.

What one decides fit for appearance through writing and speech bears a political signifi cance that risk being distorted through both language, reception in the public, and through calls for gendered representations. How can work of female philosophers be interpreted as a concern for the world from that of having to respond to a male-dominated discourse through which speech becomes trapped into what one might represent as ‘other’? In this paper, I explore the public reception of two female thinkers who (...) question, in diff erent ways, the dominant notion of the author or philosopher as a male subject; what kind of limitations does the relative notion of ‘female’ pose political action, and how can privilege constitute a hindrance to feminist solidarity? (shrink)

Leibniz’s argument against Descartes’s conservation principle in the Brevis demonstratio (1686) has traditionally been read as passing from the premise that motive force must be conserved to the conclusion that motive force is not identical to quantity of motion and, finally, that quantity of motion is not conserved. In a lesser-known draft of the same year, Christiaan Huygens claimed that Descartes had in fact never held the view that Leibniz was attacking. Huygens is right as far as the traditional reading (...) is concerned. However, if the Brevis demonstratio is seen, as it should be, in the context of Leibniz’s attempt to ground mechanics in the foundational metaphysical axiom of the equivalence of full cause and entire effect, then Huygens’s objections can be answered. Leibniz may have committed Descartes to the foundational axiom because of the Traité de la méchanique, which was available to Leibniz at that time. Leibniz had used the equivalence of full cause and entire effect both in discovering the conservation of vis viva earlier and in various arguments for it later. Thus, the Brevis demonstratio should be viewed with Leibniz’s broader foundational mission in mind. (shrink)

Introduction -- Stoic ethics and rhetoric -- Eighteenth-century common sense and sensus communis -- Taste and sensus communis -- Propriety, sympathy, and style fusing individual and social -- Victorian language theories and the decline of sensus communis.

Existing research shows consistently high levels of concern among people in the UK over the scale of immigration and its impact on jobs, wages and services. At the same time, that same body of research does not provide much in the way of detail about the nature of these concerns. This is partly because much of the data is from opinion polls which say little about the priorities and perspectives that underlie the aggregate numbers. Moreover, very little research has been (...) carried out on what new immigration policies the British public would like to see once the UK leaves the EU and free movement ends. Our research for this report aims to fill these gaps by providing evidence about how people use and understand information about economic impacts of immigration, and what they might wish to see from new, post-Brexit, policies. (shrink)

This research analyses Moo in the colloquial Iraqi Language discourse marker. Marker co-occurrences are noteworthy features. This focuses on the study of the emotive and textual functions of Moo’s co-occurrences. It has been found that there are seven functions co-occurring with Moo’s that always appear in conjunction with different grammatical structures syntax on the different speech situations. The co-occurrences were used in emotional functions to show denial, causes, inhibition, rebuke, circumstantial, exemplary and questioning. Within one utterance, these markers can occur (...) together, triggering senses that are more complex. Many statements with Moo appear frequently in the form of questions. It seems that the speakers feel more curious about Moo’s questions and ask for more responses. Speakers use coexistence in the context of textual functions to raise the issue, stress, demand answers and negotiate. It was also used when the speakers had just learned to put something to the interlocutors’ attention. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has affected most countries of the world. The detection of Covid-19 positive cases is an important step to fight the pandemic and save human lives. The polymerase chain reaction test is the most used method to detect Covid-19 positive cases. Various molecular methods and serological methods have also been explored to detect Covid-19 positive cases. Machine learning algorithms have been applied to various kinds of datasets to predict Covid-19 positive cases. The machine learning algorithms were (...) applied on a Covid-19 dataset based on commonly taken laboratory tests to predict Covid-19 positive cases. These types of datasets are easy to collect. The paper investigates the application of decision tree ensembles which are accurate and robust to the selection of parameters. As there is an imbalance between the number of positive cases and the number of negative cases, decision tree ensembles developed for imbalanced datasets are applied. F-measure, precision, recall, area under the precision-recall curve, and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve are used to compare different decision tree ensembles. Different performance measures suggest that decision tree ensembles developed for imbalanced datasets perform better. Results also suggest that including age as a variable can improve the performance of various ensembles of decision trees. (shrink)

It is, without a doubt, a difficult task to address at once the state of philosophy as embodied by the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy and the place of one’s own thought within it. This is the task that a co-director’s address tries to fill. Whether with a critical reexamination of the phenomenological mode of seeing distinctive of SPEP, of philosophical progress, or of the place of transcontinental philosophy, prior co-directors found ways to subtly chart the windings and turns (...) of the many streams that assemble to form this society.We seem to be, however, at a different juncture, so that another... (shrink)

Born into a poor, Muslim family at the end of the 19th century, Gama became World Champion wrestler by defeating the reigning Polish champion in London in 1910. By focusing on the life of Gama, the heroic representations of Gama that appear in the Hindi language literature, and the transformations in wrestling regimens that have occurred over the past several centuries, I locate the discourse and practice of wrestling within a context of intersecting concerns with nationalism, class identity and embodied (...) consciousness. To articulate the way in which subaltern identity is embodied in relation to nationalist ideas about masculine fitness, and in relation to the state as a political institution, I provide an analytic interpretation of the heroic body that focuses on themes of nervousness and obsession. (shrink)

The author asks whether there was a “scientific ‘68”, and focuses on aspects of two specific methodological proposals defined in the 1940s and 50s by the terms “action research” and “mixing methods”, applied particularly to social sciences. In the first, the climate surrounding the events of 1968 contributed to heightening the participative element to be found –by definition– in “action research”; that is: the importance of making the research subjects themselves participants in the design, execution and application of the study (...) of which they are the focus. This approach captured the democratic and anti-authoritarian spirit at the heart of the proposal, which was part of the prevailing climate in those days. The repercussions of 1968 on “mixing methods” focused on studying what had actually occurred, especially between the youth and workers, and therefore, particularly from the point of view of sociology and social psychology, using a “mixed methods” approach. The author explores the proposal of Norman Denzin; but traces the recent origins of both “mixing methods” and “action research” back to the proposals of mainly Kurt Lewin and the Chicago School. (shrink)

Herman Melville was so estranged from the religious beliefs of his time and place that his faith was doubted during his own lifetime. In the middle of the twentieth century some scholars even associated him with nihilism. To date, however, no one has offered a detailed account of Melville in relation to Nietzsche, who first made nihilism a topic of serious concern to the Western philosophical tradition. In this essay, I discuss some of the hitherto unexplored similarities between Melville’s ideas (...) and Nietzsche’s reflections on and reactions to the death of God and the advent of nihilism in the West. (shrink)

This book rethinks the discussion of sport as a cinematic subject. Arguing for the vitality of the sports film as distinctively 'modern' genre, the book looks at its innovative potential to capture twentieth- and twenty-first-century sport in all its complexity. Written in an accessible style and illustrated throughout, the book integrates work and ideas from film studies with thinking from sports psychology, philosophy, data theory and ecocriticism. In its detailed analyses of a wide-ranging group of films, the book shows how (...) film, from fictional works to biopics to experimental documentaries, can illuminate individual sporting experience, as well as sport's wider place in modern life. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAffective states influence how individuals process information and behave. Some theories predict emotional congruency effects. Emotional congruency should theoretically obstruct the learning of reward associations and their ability to guide behaviour under negative mood. Two studies tested the effects of the induction of a negative affective state on appetitive Pavlovian learning, in which neutral stimuli were associated with chocolate or alcohol rewards. In both experiments, participants showed enhanced approach tendencies towards predictors of reward after a negative relative to a positive (...) performance feedback manipulation. This increase was related to a reduction in positive affect in Experiment 1 only. No effects of the manipulation on conditioned reward expectancies, craving, or consumption were observed. Overall, our findings support the idea of counter-regu... (shrink)

This essay deals with the ideas of Ifeanyi Menkiti and Kwame Gyekye on the individual-community relationship. I begin with a provocative statement: most African intellectuals struggle with abandoning Westernity and consequently remain at the Eshuean crossroads seeking to please both sides of the abyss. It is my argument that both Menkiti and Gyekye understood that teasing out our philosophical problems might lead us to an intellectual clarity about the concepts of community and individual in African cultures. I am making no (...) attempt to solve this problem of Eshuean crossroads in this essay; I simply want to establish the grounds upon which the combatants of philosophical ideas like Menkiti and Gyekye are fighting. Keywords: Westernity, Ifeanyi Menkiti, Kwame Gyekye, Eshuean Crossroads, Africa. (shrink)

In the Name of the One who has no Name,He who appears before you, how ever you call Him!How does Islamic theology and Koran exegesis, some of whose representatives set out to find the most modern developments, such as the atomic bomb, in the Koran, deal with the latest interpretations of quantum physics, of Heisenberg's uncertainty relation, and with the question of whether the sub-atomic world is made up of waves or particles? How does a theologian react to the notion (...) that parts of the atom influence each other and that the observer himself plays a role in the shaping of future events? Are these discoveries compatible with the traditional idea of a God who knows all; are they compatible with the various terms for fate: qadar, qada, or qismat? (shrink)

Paul Thompson argues that current synthetic biology amounts to synthetic genomics, comprising a ‘platform’ technology, and that Christopher Preston's deontological objections based on its supposed rejection of the historical process of evolution miscarry. This makes it surprising that Thompson's normative ethic consists in a deontological appeal to Kantian duties of imperfect obligation. Construed as obligations subject to choice, such constraints risk being excessively malleable where the ethical objections to deployment of this technology concern land rights and/or exploitation. Thompson's advocacy of (...) processes ‘more beneficial’ well illustrates another vulnerability; processes more beneficial than ones that undermine livelihoods could be best avoided themselves, although ones more beneficial than the status quo may not. He well argues that non-deontological arguments should not be confined to human survival, but neglects stances that are either biocentric, consequentialist, or both. Yet a truly synthetic bioethics would be likely to embody these characteristics. (shrink)

In Reference and Reflexivity, John Perry tries to reconcile referentialism with a Fregean concern for cognitive significance. His trick is to supplement referential content with what he calls ‘‘reflexive’’ content. Actually, there are several levels of reflexive content, all to be distinguished from the ‘‘official,’’ referential content of an utterance. Perry is convinced by two arguments for referentialism, the ‘‘counterfactual truth-conditions’’ and the ‘‘same-saying’’ arguments, but he also acknowledges the force of two Fregean arguments against it, arguments that pose the (...) ‘‘coreference’’ and the ‘‘no-reference’’ problems. He sees these as genuine problems for referentialism and does not share Howard Wettstein’s (1986) view that semantics has ‘‘rested on a mistake,’’ the mistake of thinking that semantics is obliged to come to grips with ‘‘cognitive significance’’ and, in particular, to explain the fact that coreferring terms can differ in cognitive significance and that terms lacking in reference can still have cognitive significance. Perry points out that ‘‘there is nothing in [the arguments for referentialism] to show that the official content, rather than the reflexive content, is the key to understanding the cognitive motivation and impact of utterances’’ (Perry 2001, 193).1 In other words, ‘‘a theory of direct reference provides no argument for ignoring reflexive content, and, properly understood, has no motivation for searching for such an argument.’’ Thus Perry uses the notion of reflexive content to complement referentialism with a theory of cognitive significance. Frege drew a fundamental distinction between the reference of a term and the means by which its reference is determined. In his view, however, it is not the references themselves but the means by which they are determined that enter into propositions (‘‘Thoughts’’) expressed by sentences in which the terms occur. So we might call Frege an ‘indirect reference’ theorist. Echoing the introduction to Kaplan’s ‘‘Afterthoughts’’ (1989a), Perry stresses that ‘direct’, as it occurs in ‘direct reference’, does not imply that ‘‘the mechanism of reference is unmediated by the relation of fitting identifying conditions’’ (188). (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Ways of Failing to Do Something Refraining Omitting Negative Acts: Inaction as Action? References.

William Smith’s recent article criticises the so-called orthodox approaches to the normative analysis of healthcare resource allocation, associated to the requirement that decision-makers should abide by strictly procedural principles of legitimacy defining a deliberative democratic process. Much of the appeal of Smith’s argument goes down to his awareness of real-world processes and, in particular, to the large gap he identifies between well-led democratic deliberation and the messiness of the process through which the intuitively legitimate Affordable Care Act (ACA) was created. (...) This reply aims to demonstrate that the ACA provides no counterexample to orthodox views, seizing this opportunity to explore the specific space that the procedural principles populating orthodox accounts are meant to regulate. Neither general questions of healthcare justice concerning, for example, universal access nor, relatedly, the activity of elected politicians falls within the natural scope of application of such principles, revealing a much more complex picture of the interactions between justice and legitimacy as well as substantive and procedural considerations than acknowledged by Smith. In the end, orthodox accounts of healthcare resource allocation turn out to provide a precious fund of theoretical resources for the normative study of administrators, which might be useful well beyond bioethics and health policy. (shrink)

Most democratic theorists agree that concentrations of wealth and power tend to distort the functioning of democracy and ought to be countered wherever possible. Deliberative democrats are no exception: though not its only potential value, the capacity of deliberation to ‘neutralise power’ is often regarded as ‘fundamental’ to deliberative theory. Power may be neutralised, according to many deliberative democrats, if citizens can be induced to commit more fully to the deliberative resolution of common problems. If they do, they will be (...) unable to get away with inconsistencies and bad or private reasons, thereby mitigating the illegitimate influence of power. I argue, however, that the means by which power inflects political disagreement is far more subtle than this model suggests and cannot be countered so simply. As a wealth of recent research in political psychology demonstrates, human beings persistently exhibit ‘motivated reasoning’, meaning that even when we are sincerely committed to the deliberative resolution of common problems, and even when we are exposed to the same reasons and evidence, we still disagree strongly about what ‘fair cooperation’ entails. Motivated reasoning can be counteracted, but only under exceptional circumstances such as those that enable modern science, which cannot be reliably replicated in our society at large. My analysis suggests that in democratic politics – which rules out the kind of anti-democratic practices available to scientists – we should not expect deliberation to reliably neutralise power. (shrink)

A popular belief sustains that being honest is not profitable. John Baines sustains that morality is a powerful tool for success in life. Morals for the 21st Century is not a simple reformulation of natural morals, but an absolutely new proposal of morals in which the author categorically asserts and presents experiments to the effect that morality is firmly set on scientific premises, for the first time breaking the ideological and theological bases which have always served as their support. The (...) morals proposed by John Baines are situated in the world of the laws of energy, that is, in the strict domain of physics. Every person that complies with this moral code, will be complying with himself: by respecting this moral code, he will be respecting himself: sowing the laws of this moral code in the earth of his being, he will harvest multiplying each grain, proving the benefits of complying with this eternal order of things, without need of fear or faith. "Genuine morals correspond to the harmonization guidelines of the Universe and Nature, so that those who carefully observe their laws will always be successful..." Also available in Spanish, Arabic. (shrink)