This dissertation presents a theory of online propaganda and radicalization which highlights the interaction between communication, epistemology, and technology. The central focus is providing an analysis of online media communications, content posted on social media platforms and transmitted by automated recommendation systems, which better explains how propaganda and radicalization have adapted so well to this technological environment. First, propaganda is interpreted as a unique approach to communication which manipulates the expectations an audience has of successful communications, and not simply as (...) a collection of individual acts with characteristic properties. A major aspect to this interpretation of propaganda is an emphasis on those environmental factors and sociological conditions involved in communication, which can have a direct impact on our experience and interpretation of reality. Second, considering these aspects a detailed account of how users experience the technical machinery facilitating social media platforms is presented, highlighting the problematic epistemic states users are forced to inhabit. Finally, online radicalization is explained through this new propaganda interpretation, the user experience of the technology underpinning social media platforms, and the epistemic states forced by online automation. (shrink)

In this paper we compare the propositional logic of Frege’s Grundgesetze der Arithmetik to modern propositional systems, and show that Frege does not have a separable propositional logic, definable in terms of primitives of Grundgesetze, that corresponds to modern formulations of the logic of “not”, “and”, “or”, and “if…then…”. Along the way we prove a number of novel results about the system of propositional logic found in Grundgesetze, and the broader system obtained by including identity. In particular, we show that (...) the propositional connectives that are definable in terms of Frege’s horizontal, negation, and conditional are exactly the connectives that fuse with the horizontal, and we show that the logical operators that are definable in terms of the horizontal, negation, the conditional, and identity are exactly the operators that are invariant with respect to permutations on the domain that leave the truth-values fixed. We conclude with some general observations regarding how Frege understood his logic, and how this understanding differs from modern views. (shrink)

The United States, along with other nations and international organizations, has developed an elaborate system of ethical norms and legal rules to govern biomedical research using human subjects. These policies govern research that might provide direct health benefits to participants and research in which there is no prospect for participant health benefits. There has been little discussion, however, about how well these rules would apply to research designed to improve participants’ capabilities or characteristics beyond the goal of good health. When (...) mentioned at all in the literature, this so-called enhancement research, as opposed to research aimed at diagnosing, preventing, curing, or treating illnesses or medical conditions, is usually dismissed without explanation. (shrink)

We agree with Barsalou's claim about the importance of perceptual symbols in a theory of abstract concepts. Yet we maintain that the richness of many abstract concepts arises from the metaphorical mapping of recurring patterns of perceptual, embodied experience to provide essential structure to these abstract ideas.

In the Preface to his impressive and engaging new commentary on the Critique of Pure Reason, Jay Rosenberg informs us that the book is both a product of his own lectures and a “direct descendent of Wilfrid Sellars’ legendary introduction to Kant” . Its origins in the classroom give Accessing Kant a refreshingly pedagogical tone. Throughout, Rosen-berg—who was a student of Sellars’ at the University of Pittsburgh—makes felicitous use of clear examples, familiar problems and authors, and visual aids to (...) clarify “the Big Picture” operating in the first Critique. Mercifully, however, his style owes little to Sellars’ own brutally opaque prose.Rosenberg also shares his teacher’s enthusiasm for the history of philosophy. The reader will not find Rosenberg sloughing off Kant’s “lesser predecessors” in the manner of P. F. Strawson. However, the history on display in Accessing Kant has more to do with the curricular demands of English-speaking philosophy departments than with Kant’s own intellectual and cultural context. This means that his Kant argues across the ages with giants rather than with his peers in Halle and Berlin. Nor, despite the occasional reference to Kant’s handwritten marginalia, does Rosenberg devote any effort to. (shrink)

This book considers how observations about the past influence future behaviour, as expressed in language. Focusing on information gathered from speech and other evidence sources, the author offers a model of how judgements about reliability can be made, and how such judgements factor into how people treat information they acquire via those sources.

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the normative role of conventions in sports. However, the approach I have in mind does not dispatch the theory of interpretivism. What I offer is a synthesis that aims to show how interpretivism works in concert with – and relies heavily on – conventions. To make this point, I will argue that historical, cultural, and even simple preferential needs and desires help to determine what counts as athletic ‘excellence’ in sports.

Once again available in paperback, Plato is the first half of Eric Voegelin's Plato and Aristotle, the third volume of his five-volume Order and History, which ...

From Clouds to Corsair: Kierkegaard, Aristophanes, and Socrates -- The pure fool and the knight of faith: Wolfram's Parzival and the stages of existence -- From romantic aesthete to Christian analogue: Don Quixote's sallies in Kierkegaard's authorship -- Saying not quite "everything just as it is": Shakespeare on life's way -- "Sorrow's changeling": irony, humor, and laughter in Kierkegaard and Carlyle.

Science, politics and gnosticism -- Ersatz religion.

Genetic testing is currently subject to little oversight, despite the significant ethical issues involved. Repeated recommendations for increased regulation of the genetic testing market have led to little progress in the policy arena. A 2005 Internet search identified 13 websites offering health-related genetic testing for direct purchase by the consumer. Further examination of these sites showed that overall, biotech companies are not providing enough information for consumers to make well-informed decisions; they are not consistently offering genetic counseling services; and some (...) sites even offer tests with little evidence of clinical value. This article aims to raise company and consumer awareness about the ethical concerns surrounding the direct-to-consumer marketing of health-related genetic tests. It also suggests ways that biotech companies can bring their services to the public in an ethically responsible manner, without increased regulatory oversight. (shrink)

This essay examines the connection between the concept of autonomy and the concept of an ideal, moral self in Kant’s practical philosophy. Its central thesis is that self-legislation does not rest on the capacity to exempt oneself from nature’s causal network. Instead, it rests on the practical capacity for identification with what Kant calls an individual’s “moral personality.” A person’s ability to identify with this morally ideal version of himself gives shape to his will, enabling him to decide how to (...) act on the basis of reasons that do not stem from desires or inclinations. It thus makes possible a form of volition that is autonomous rather than heteronomous. (shrink)

Offers a history of the philosophy of time and a comparison of the ways of conceiving the temporal, concentrating on European philosophy and its impact the connection between time and money in Western civilization.

The Nature of Suffering underscores the change that is taking place in medicine from a basic concern with disease to a greater focus on the sick person. Cassell centers his discussion on the problem of suffering because, he says, its recognition and relief are a test of the adequacy of any system of medicine. He describes what suffering is and its relationship to the sick person: bodies do not suffer, people do. An exclusive concern with scientific knowledge of the body (...) and disease, therefore, impedes an understanding of suffering and diminishes the care of the suffering patient. The growing criticism that medicine is not sufficiently humanistic does not go deep enough to provide a basis for a new understanding of medicine. New concepts in medicine must have their basis in its history and in the development of ideas about disease and treatment. Cassell uses many stories about patients to demonstrate that, despite the current dominance of science and technology, there can be no diagnosis, search for the cause of the patient's disease, prognostication, or treatment without consideration of the individual sick person. Recent trends in medicine and society, Cassell believes, show that it is time for the sick person to be not merely an important concern for physicians but the central focus of medicine. He addresses the exciting problems involved in such a shift. In this new medicine, doctors would have to know the person as well as they know the disease. What are persons, however, and how are doctors to comprehend them? The kinds of knowledge involved are varied, including values and aesthetics as well as science. In the process of knowing the experience of patient and doctor move to center stage. He believes that the exploration of the person will engage medicine in the 21st century just as understanding the body has occupied the last hundred years. (shrink)

In continuation of [JOH04, OH07], we prove that existentially closed CSA-groups have the independence property. This is done by showing that there exist words having the independence property relative to the class of torsion-free hyperbolic groups.

In “A Short Refutation of Ethical Egoism,” Richmond Campbell purports to refute “the view that everyone ought to do what benefits him the most in a given situation.” This is the theory which is “sometimes called impersonal ethical egoism ” [249). Campbell takes the following proposition as fundamental to his refutation of IEE.I. If an agent ought to do something in a given situation and another agent ought to do something in the same situation, then it is not logically impossible (...) for them to do these things in that situation [250].Granted proposition I, Campbell's refutation would require only:II. There is a situation S where an agent M would benefit most from doing X and another agent N would benefit most from doing what would prevent M from doing X [251]. (shrink)

This book is a readers' companion to Simone Weil's The Need for Roots. It includes comprehensive and illuminating essays from recognized Weil scholars from the United States, Canada, England, France, and Germany, addressing the most pressing historical and contemporary aspects of Weil's thought and striking proposals. These include her substituting obligations for rights as the moral basis of society, her critique of our uprootedness and her proposals for rootedness, her critique of our dangerous understanding of greatness, the importance of work (...) for society, and her critique of modern science. This companion reader relies on the latest and most reliable work on the history of the Weil manuscript as provided by French scholars. It is unique in its thorough examination of the book's issues, which center around a spiritual renewal, first of France, but more broadly of western democracies. It includes a comprehensive introduction to the issues important to understanding The Need for Roots. Also included in the appendices are a new translation of Weil's preliminary study of obligations that was meant as an introduction to her work (but always published separately) as well as a translation of an address by Free French leader Andre Philippe-an address that helped set the moral issues that Weil would come to address. The book is both a scholarly contribution to understanding Weil's book and a striking set of conversations about many of the most pressing contemporary issues surrounding the possibilities of a spiritual and moral renewal of Western norms. The ultimate point of this companion is to stress the importance of Weil's The Need for Roots. In a time of clashing ideologies, politics of identity, and a desire, somehow in all that, to find a path to community and a way of respecting all human beings, The Need for Roots is now, more than ever, a timely book and one that needs careful examination and reflection. (shrink)

Heterogeneous beliefs and decision processes generate positive externalities for social and economic systems, analogous to biodiversity in biological systems. Although some aspects of biodiversity (e.g., pests, parasites and bacteria) can lead to ecological and economic problems, biodiversity provides flows of beneficial ecological services and is widely regarded as a valuable natural resource and informational asset, whose value increases as we learn more and science progresses (Wilson in Bioscience 35(11):700–706, 1985). Heterogeneous beliefs and decision processes (and heterogeneous behaviors they generate) similarly (...) provide flows of beneficial economic services. Behavioral diversity should therefore be seen as a natural resource and informational asset likely to improve human wellbeing in surprising ways in the future. Paternalistic policies motivated by the goal of “correcting” allegedly suboptimal beliefs and behavior that diverge from expert recommendations jeopardize behavioral diversity at a substantial cost to social welfare. The risk of encroaching on this beneficial behavioral heterogeneity with policies that aim to induce behavioral and belief monocultures should be included explicitly as costs when evaluating nudges and other paternalistic policies. (shrink)

Nombre de naturalistes du XVIIIe siècle sont des clercs. Ils ont investi cette science à des fins apologétiques.

Un examen de la division quasi officielle du monde philosophique en deux blocs : phénoménologique et analytique. Bilan de ses prolongements en France ces vingt dernières années.

In this essay, I want to argue that the existence of gender most times translated as gender binary, is a biological fact. What is at stake is a framework for transcending unequal gender binary to gender complementarity. Here, I propose to use Chimakonam’s Ezumezu logic as a mechanism for disclosing gender complementarity. The illogical, irrational and subjective perspectives on lopsided gender differences between men and women will be challenged in this essay. I will analyze the thrust of Ezumezu logic, its (...) major principles, structures, and pillars of thought. I will also demonstrate its global and contextual relevance. I will submit that Ezumezu logic can ground gender complementarity across global cultures. I argue that regardless of the physical differences between males and females, it is illogical to exploit such differences to promote gender stereotype. Keywords: Gender equality, Ezumezu Logic, Gender Complementarity, Jonathan Chimakonam. (shrink)

This paper attempts to shed light on Kant’s notion of autonomy in his moral philosophy by considering the extent to which he presents a similar doctrine in his theoretical philosophy, where he strikingly claims (e.g., in the Prolegomena) that the understanding prescribes laws to nature. It argues that even though there are important points of difference between the cases of theoretical legislation of the laws of nature and autonomy in moral philosophy, their extensive parallels make a strong, even if not (...) definitive case in favor of the Prolegomena forming at least an important part of the explanation of the emergence of autonomy in the Groundwork. In addition, the comparison proves instructive insofar as it reveals deep structural parallels between Kant’s theoretical and practical philosophy regarding his conception of laws. (shrink)

This paper criticises evidence-based practice in psychology (EBPP) for not actually being a tripartite model. According to the American Psychological Association, EBPP is defined as the integration of the best available research with clinical expertise in the context of patient characteristics, culture, and preferences. Nonetheless, EBPP fails to be a tripartite model because it is defined by science alone. This paper aims at explaining why this conflation may have come about. It also shows why clinical expertise and patient preferences should (...) be defined extra-scientifically. (shrink)

Volume 35, Issue 1, January-March 2020, Page 60-64.