Many people have a strong intuition that there is something morally objectionable about playing violent video games, particularly with increases in the number of people who are playing them and the games' alleged contribution to some highly publicized crimes. In this paper,I use the framework of utilitarian, deontological, and virtue ethical theories to analyze the possibility that there might be some philosophical foundation for these intuitions. I raise the broader question of whether or not participating in authentic simulations of (...) immoral acts in generalis wrong. I argue that neither the utilitarian, nor the Kantian has substantial objections to violent game playing, although they offer some important insights into playing games in general and what it is morally to be a ``good sport.'' The Aristotelian, however, has a plausible and intuitive way to protest participation in authentic simulations of violent acts in terms of character: engaging in simulated immoral actserodes one's character and makes it more difficult for one to live a fulfilled eudaimonic life. (shrink)

The spread of Islam from the Arabian Peninsula to the North Africa and al-Andalus in the west, to the Chinese borders and the Indian Subcontinent in the east, helped Muslims to establish close contact with many different cultures. One of the consequences of this is that both the increase in scientific accumulation and the emergence of new needs in military, financial and similar aspects accelerated the studies on geography. Islamic geographers of the first period, not only did they describe the (...) cities to which they travelled but also they depicted the cities about which they could collect data. These first works, which can be considered as a kind of written maps, have some common features, although they are written in different geographies and revealed by different schools. One of these common points is the terminology that they used in depictions of cities. This terminology suggests that there was a common city typology among Muslim geography scholars that stands out in the depiction of cities. In this study, particularly we will try to answer a number of questions such as what the concepts of authors are and what they mean and the relationship between these concepts by examining the uses of authors in their works.SummaryThe depictions of settlements which were designated as madīna in the works of the medieval Muslim geographers have some common characteristics. One of them is the terminology used by the authors in depictions of cities. In this study, particularly I tried to answer a number of questions such as what the concepts of authors are and what they mean and the relationship between these concepts by examining the uses of authors in their works. Then, a common city typology which is prominent in the depiction of cities among the Muslim geography scholars has been put forward. The structural elements that are considered to constitute this typology also revealed the topographic elements of a city at that time.The cities conquered by muslims had a great impact on the emergence of the terminology used by Muslim geographers in depicting cities. I can say that especially Persian influence; the cities in Iran, Khurāsān which were captured from the Sāsānians and Mā Warāʾ al-Nahr districts was effective. However, geography writers did not restrict using this terminology for only these regions, they also had continued to use in depiction of other regions such as North Africa and al-Andalus. This means that a common language and terminology emerged and started to be used.Geography authors point to five main elements that I have examined in separate titles while describing Islamic cities that they called "madīna". These are kuhandiz, shahristān, rabad, the part so-called “the adjacent agricultural fields / agricultural fields surrounded by wall” by us and the last part rustāq connected to main city center. Depending on ways of development of cities, these elements sometimes developed from inside to out, in other words from center to environment, sometimes surrounded by independent walls and sometimes adjacent to each other. However, a city did not have to have all these elements at the same time. This situation was totally related to development level of city, and the cities which had all these elements were the military, administrative and economically developed centers of the period. From the methodical point of view, it should be noted that the examples given in the study were selected from among the other cities in order to ensure that to understand the subject in best way and ensure that the silhouette on the city typology is seen better. Because it is possible to find examples of each element in all city depictions of Islamic geography writers. Kuhandiz, shahristān/madīna, and rustāq are the elements that can be seen in the pre-Islamic period. It is possible to think of the Islamic period as a period in which these words were conceptualized, new madīnas and rabads were formed, surrounded by walls and rabads were gradually transformed into madīnas. In geography texts, it is seen that there is a concept confusion between kuhandiž and buildings named qalʿa, ḥiṣār and ḥiṣn. However, as some writers hade tried to emphasize, "kuhandiz" had been using for these structures which were previously known as fortress (especially ḥiṣn or qalʿa) due to their proportion to shahristāns / madīnas of city centers, and were notably seen in the regions of Khurāsān and Mā Warāʾ al-Nahr. Kuhandižs represent the centers of pre-Islamic cities and were continued to be used for the same purpose in the early Islamic period. But, these old areas were gradually abandoned due to the development of new parts of settlement under Muslim administration. Shahristāns were residential areas where the majority of people lived. With the Islamic period, the word “shahristān” had been terminologically changed to “madīna” and use of this concept by scientific circles was gradually disappeared in time. At this point, it is one of the issues to be considered in the examination of geography works that the use of “madīna” in Arabic both for the concept of the city in which we examine the structural elements in this article, and for “shahristān” which is one of the elements of the city.As it is understood from the geographical texts, madīna was continued to be established by Muslims in cities for centuries. These are also examples of change in cities as a result of development and housing activities after the conquests. However, we don’t have much information in the geography works about the cities which had more than one shahristān /madīna before the inhabit of Muslims. As far as we can reach, the only example in our resources with multiple madīnas/shahristān belonging to the pre-Islamic period is Bukhara.As in the developed cities of the period such as Bukhara, Samarqand, Marw and Balkh, it is seen a generaly circular fortification wall which usually surrounded main center of cities including kuhandizs, madīnas/ shahristān and mostly later rabads. So, it is more appropriate to consider the areas between these walls and other parts of city (kuhandiz, shahristān/madīna, rabad) as an independent element because of the fact that they were lands with determined borders and were defined by separate concepts. I have used “adjacent agricultural area” for this element for now. Thus, this area constitutes one of the structural elements of the cities.Rustāqs were parts of Persian-Sāsānian urbanization and land administration, and had continued to be partially implemented during the Islamic period. They were the source of livelihood of the cities from foundation stage and were an indispensable tool of the society based on agriculture in that ages. Depending on size, the cities could have dozens of them. As can be seen in the case of Balkh, the rustāḳs especially connected to the big city centers were not composed of one or several villages. Moreover, these rustāqs could contain big settlements called madīna which were their centers. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is a historical analysis and evaluate of the metaphysic of Neo-Kantian philosopher Johannes Volkelt and of Postneo-Kantian Martin Heidegger. Heidegger's approach to Kant's critique of pure reason (transcendental philosophy) as the foundation of metaphysics is not new and it had a major precursor in the metaphysical Neo-Kantianism. In the Neo-Kantianism was taken inside the question of the possibility of metaphysics, not only as metaphysica specialis, but also as the ontology (metaphysica generalis).

The paper deals with the connection of "mathesis", intuition and imagination in Descartes' "Regulae ad directionem ingenii" - young Descartes' first writing about methodology, intended to set the foundation of a "mathesis generalis" - and in some of his followers/critics, in particular Leibniz, on the background of the so-called psychology of faculties. Two are the main points at stake: the presence of mental images in thought processes, and the cognitive functions of the imagination. A thorough analysis of Descartes' examples (...) of intuitive, not-imaginative cognition shows the difficulties in his approach. Different solutions will be proposed by Descartes himself and by most cartesians, on one hand, and by Tschirnhaus on the other hand. Leibniz's peculiar solution is finally considered. (shrink)

The concept of green chemistry dominated the imagination of environmentally-minded chemists over the last thirty years. The conceptual frameworks laid by the American Environmental Protection Agency scholars in the 1990s constitute today the core of a line of thinking aimed at transforming chemistry into a sustainable science. And yet, in the shadow of green chemistry, a broader, even if less popular, concept of sustainable chemistry started taking shape. Initially, it was either loosely associated with green chemistry or left undefined as (...) a distinct but generaly different approach. In such a vague form, it was endorsed by the organizations such as OECD and the IUPAC in the late 1990s. It was not until the 2010s however, when it solidified as a separate more embracing and more overarching tradition that could compete with green chemistry by offering insights that the latter lacked. Sustainable chemistry seeks to transcend the narrow focus on chemical synthesis and embrace a much more holistic view of chemical activities including social responsibility and sustainable business models. Due to an interesting historical coincidence, it was in Germany where sustainable chemistry took roots and became institutionalized for the first time. It was thanks to German exceptionalism and the unwillingness of German scholars to embrace the “green” terminology originating from the US, the concept of sustainable chemistry could safely mature and develop in the German-speaking world, before reaching a high degree of formalization with dedicated journals, founding articles, and programmatic principles aspiring to transform the entire chemical enterprise in the years to come. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 12, December 2024, Page 59-62.

Presents outstanding translations of the Greek philosopher's works by leading British and American scholars of the last century.

In this article, I offer a foundation for the prima facie idea of a right to welfare based on a neglected aspect of Kant’s legal theory: his account of equity rights. I argue...

Presentism states that everything is present. Crucial to our understanding of this thesis is how we interpret the ‘is’. Recently, several philosophers have claimed that on any interpretation presentism comes out as either trivially true or manifestly false. Yet, presentism is meant to be a substantive and interesting thesis. I outline in detail the nature of the problem and the standard interpretative options. After unfavourably assessing several popular responses in the literature, I offer an alternative interpretation that provides the desired (...) result. This interpretation is then used to clarify the distinction between ‘real change’ from mere variation and temporal relativisation. Reflecting on my solution, I try to diagnose the source of confusion over these issues. Then, building upon Fine’s distinction between ontic and factive presentism, I elucidate what the presentist thesis specifically concerns and how best to formalise it. In the process I distinguish a weak and strong version of the presentist thesis. Finally, I end by drawing out some limitations of the paper. (shrink)

This bold and lively essay is one of those rarest of intellectual achievements, a big small book. In its short length are condensed enormous erudition and impressive analytical scope. With verve and self-assurance, it addresses a broad, central question: How can we improve our understanding of the large-scale processes and structures that transformed the world of the nineteenth century and are transforming our world today? Tilly contends that twentieth-century social theories have been encumbered by a nineteenth century heritage of “pernicious (...) postulates.” He subjects each misleading belief to rigorous criticism, challenging many standard social science paradigms and methodologies. As an alternative to those timeless, placeless models of social change and organization, Tilly argues convincingly for a program of concrete, historically grounded analysis and systematic comparison. To illustrate the strategies available for such research, Tilly assesses the works of several major practitioners of comparative historical analysis, making skillful use of this selective review to offer his own speculative, often unconventional accounts of our recent past. Historically oriented social scientists will welcome this provocative essay and its wide-ranging agenda for comparative historical research. Other social scientists, their graduate and undergraduate students, and even the interested general reader will find this new work by a major scholar stimulating and eminently readable. This is the second of five volumes commissioned by the Russell Sage Foundation to mark its seventy-fifth anniversary. "In this short, brilliant book Tilly suggests a way to think about theories of historical social change....This book should find attentive readers both in undergraduate courses and in graduate seminars. It should also find appreciative readers, for Tilly is a writer as well as a scholar." —Choice. (shrink)

In the third of his Logical Investigations, Husserl draws an important distinction between two kinds of parts: the dependent parts like the redness of a visual datum or the squareness of a given picture, and the independent parts like the head of a horse or a brick in a wall. On his view, the distinction is to be understood in terms of a more fundamental notion, the notion of foundation. This paper is an attempt at clarifying that notion. Such (...) attempts have already been undertaken by Peter Simons and Kit Fine, and the paper also contains elements of comparison of our three sets of views. (shrink)

A new foundation for constructive nonstandard analysis is presented. It is based on an extension of a sheaf-theoretic model of nonstandard arithmetic due to I. Moerdijk. The model consists of representable sheaves over a site of filter bases. Nonstandard characterisations of various notions from analysis are obtained: modes of convergence, uniform continuity and differentiability, and some topological notions. We also obtain some additional results about the model. As in the classical case, the order type of the nonstandard natural numbers (...) is a dense set of copies of the integers. Every standard set has a hyperfinite enumeration of its standard elements in the model. All arguments are carried out within a constructive and predicative metatheory: Martin-Löf's type theory. (shrink)

This paper presents a new foundation of equilibrium thermodynamics based on certain ideas of T. Ehrenfest. The main result is the proof for the existence of entropy as a consequence of the conservation of energy for conservative thermal systems.

Men’s hunting has dominated the discourse on energy capture and flow in the past decade or so. We turn to women’s roles as critical to household formation, pair-bonding, and intergenerational bonds. Their pivotal contributions in food processing and distribution likely promoted kinship, both genetic and affinal, and appear to be the foundation from which households evolved. With conscious recognition of household social units, variable cultural constructions of human kinship systems that were sensitive to environmental and technological conditions could emerge. (...) Kinship dramatically altered the organization of resource access for our species, creating what we term “kinship ecologies.” We present simple mathematical models to show how hunting leads to dependence on women’s contributions, bonds men to women, and bonds generations together. Kinship, as it organized transfers of food and labor energy centered on women, also became integrated with the biological evolution of human reproduction and life history. (shrink)

Neurotechnologies broadly understood are tools that have the capability to read, record and modify our mental activity by acting on its brain correlates. The emergence of increasingly powerful and sophisticated techniques has given rise to the proposal to introduce new rights specifically directed to protect mental privacy, freedom of thought, and mental integrity. These rights, also proposed as basic human rights, are conceived in direct relation to tools that threaten mental privacy, freedom of thought, mental integrity, and personal identity. In (...) this paper, our goal is to give a philosophical foundation to a specific right that we will call right to mental integrity. It encapsulates both the classical concepts of privacy and non-interference in our mind/brain. Such a philosophical foundation refers to certain features of the mind that hitherto could not be reached directly from the outside: intentionality, first-person perspective, personal autonomy in moral choices and in the construction of one's narrative, and relational identity. A variety of neurotechnologies or other tools, including artificial intelligence, alone or in combination can, by their very availability, threaten our mental integrity. Therefore, it is necessary to posit a specific right and provide it with a theoretical foundation and justification. It will be up to a subsequent treatment to define the moral and legal boundaries of such a right and its application. (shrink)

This article considers the development of the idea of universal moral principles in the work of Thomas Aquinas and his predecessors in the thirteenth century. Like other medieval authors who sought to place the principles of moral practice on a foundation more secure than on the choices of the good person, as described by Aristotle, Thomas chooses to introduce a measure of ethical certitude through the concept of the innate habit of synderesis. This idea, introduced by Jerome in his (...) commentary on Ezekiel, locates an inextinguishable spark of conscience in all humans. Thomas, influenced by Philip the Chancellor and Albert the Great, locates the principles of natural law in this innate habit of synderesis. By so doing he can claim that all human beings have the ability to recognize universally binding moral imperatives, regardless of their background and societal influences. Through this natural ability the human basis for moral action found in Aristotle's Ethics yields to one based upon the eternal immutable laws of a divine being. (shrink)

The American Foundation Myth in Vietnam deals with how the results of the Vietnam War challenged the long-standing belief in America's role in the world as a unique nation favored by God that carries a global responsibility with it. The author disputes the commonly held belief that America discarded this foundation myth, developed out of John Winthrop's idea of a "city on a hill," following Vietnam. He reexamines the myth in the context of American history to show that (...) the country still firmly attaches itself to the rhetoric of the foundation myth. The analysis divides Americans into one group that believes America's mission cannot be fulfilled without active involvement on the global stage, and one that maintains that its mythic goals are fulfilled most effectively by developing itself as the world's model for freedom and democracy. The tension created between these perspectives creates a dynamic and durable quality that fuels the power of the foundation myth even after a seemingly destructive event such as the Vietnam War. (shrink)

This book seeks to offer a robust foundation of philosophical concepts to students pursuing studies in education. By examining key philosophical theories and their applications in educational settings, the objective is to equip readers with the critical thinking skills necessary to navigate complex educational landscapes.

This paper investigates the medical law and ethics learning needs of Foundation doctors by means of a national survey developed in association with key stakeholders including the General Medical Council and Health Education England. Four hundred sevnty-nine doctors completed the survey. The average self-reported level of preparation in MEL was 63%. When asked to rate how confident they felt in approaching three cases of increasing ethical complexity, more FYs were fully confident in the more complex cases than in the (...) more standard case. There was no apparent relationship with confidence and reported teaching at medical school. The less confident doctors were no more likely to ask for further teaching on the topic than the confident doctors. This suggests that FYs can be vulnerable when facing ethical decisions by being underprepared, not recognising their lack of ability to make a reasoned decision or by being overconfident. Educators need to be aware of this and provide practical MEL training based on trainee experiences and real-world ethics and challenge learners’ views. Given the complexities of many ethical decisions, preparedness should not be seen as the ability to make a difficult decision but rather a recognition that such cases are difficult, that doubt is permissible and the solution may well be beyond the relatively inexperienced doctor. Educators and supervisors should therefore be ensuring that this is clear to their trainees. This necessitates an environment in which questions can be asked and uncertainty raised with the expectation of a supportive response. (shrink)

An ab-initio foundation for relativistic spacetime is given, which is a conservative extension of Zermelo’s set theory with urelemente. Primitive entities are worldlines rather than spacetime points. Spacetime points are sets of intersecting worldlines. By the proper axioms, they form a manifold. Entities known in differential geometry, up to a metric, are defined and have the usual properties. A set-realistic point of view is adopted. The intended ontology is a set-theoretical hierarchy with a broad base of the empty set (...) and urelemente. Sets generated from the empty set are mathematically interpreted, all other sets are physically interpreted. (shrink)

Veatch proposes a "triple contract theory" as a new foundation for medical ethics. His criticisms of unilateral "physician ethics" are sound, but uncertainty as to whether he is proposing merely imaginary or real contracts vitiates his constructive arguments. If the former, he is recommending a minor heuristic device for thinking about ethics, not a foundation. If the latter, his proposal is utterly impractical and a medical covenant will have to be developed another way. Keywords: Veatch, social contract, medical (...) covenant, medical ethics CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

References to Popper’s concept of three worlds occupy a central position in ontological and human ecological questions in the recent literature on theoretical geography. This article demonstrates that Popper’s ideas and concepts have not been fully understood, causing problems for integrative research. Firstly, we critically review the discussion of Popper’s concept of three worlds in geography. We criticize its popular ontological interpretation, and furthermore we point out that Popper’s evolutionary basis has been consistently neglected. Subsequently we present an interpretation of (...) Popper’s concept of three worlds which seems most plausible. We thereby identify his intentions and emphasize the evolutionary foundation of our interpretation of his theory. Finally, perspectives for human ecological research in geography on the basis of theories of evolution and emergence will be outlined. (shrink)