_A provocative essay challenging the idea of Buddhist exceptionalism, from one of the world’s most widely respected philosophers and writers on Buddhism and science_ Buddhism has become a uniquely favored religion in our modern age. A burgeoning number of books extol the scientifically proven benefits of meditation and mindfulness for everything ranging from business to romance. There are conferences, courses, and celebrities promoting the notion that Buddhism is spirituality for the rational, compatible with cutting‑edge science, indeed, “a science of the (...) mind.” In this provocative book, Evan Thompson argues that this representation of Buddhism is false. In lucid and entertaining prose, Thompson dives deep into both Western and Buddhist philosophy to explain how the goals of science and religion are fundamentally different. Efforts to seek their unification are wrongheaded and promote mistaken ideas of both. He suggests cosmopolitanism instead, a worldview with deep roots in both Eastern and Western traditions. Smart, sympathetic, and intellectually ambitious, this book is a must‑read for anyone interested in Buddhism’s place in our world today. (shrink)

A growing number of consumer technology companies are aiming to convince older people that humanoid robots make helpful tools to support aging-in-place. As hybrid devices, socially assistive robots (SARs) are situated between health monitoring tools, familiar digital assistants, security aids, and more advanced AI-powered devices. Consequently, they implicate older people’s privacy in complex ways. Such devices are marketed to perform functions common to smart speakers (e.g., Amazon Echo) and smart home platforms (e.g., Google Home), while other functions are (...) more specific to older people, including health and safety monitoring and serving as companions to mitigate loneliness. Privacy is a key value central to debates about the ethics of using SARs in aged care, yet there has been very little interchange between these debates and the robust theoretical discussion in the legal literature about the future of privacy and AI governance. Drawing on two qualitative studies of older people’s views on consumer SARs, the paper contributes novel findings about older people’s thinking on privacy and data governance at the intersection of their experiences with present day digital technologies and projections for future AI systems, and places their views in dialogue with debates about the future of privacy protection and AI governance. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive presentation of the Pratyabhij philosophy (elaborated in the 10th and 11th centuries by Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta) by showing how its main concepts arose from the confrontation of aiva religious dogmas ...

Stengers recovers the idea of 'common sense' as a meeting place-a commons-where opposed ideas of science and humanistic inquiry can engage one another and help to move society forward. Her reconciliation of science and philosophy is especially urgent today-when climate disaster looms all around us, when the values of what we thought of as civilization and modernity are discredited, and when expertise of any kind is under attack.

This article examines how the Kashmiri non-dualistic Śaiva philosophers Utpaladeva (tenth century) and Abhinavagupta (10th–11th centuries) present and criticize a theory expounded by certain Buddhist philosophers, identified by the two Śaiva authors as Sautrāntikas. According to this theory, no entity external to consciousness can ever be perceived since perceived objects are nothing but internal aspects (ākāra) of consciousness. Nonetheless we must infer the existence of external entities so as to account for the fact that consciousness is aware of a variety (...) of objects: just as a mirror takes on a variegated appearance only by reflecting a multiplicity of objects that remain external to it, in the same way, phenomenal variety can be explained only by assuming the existence of various objects external to consciousness. In Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikās I, 5, 8–9 and their commentaries, Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta endeavour to criticize this theory, which challenges their own idealistic principles: according to them, the Sautrāntikas’ inference is neither legitimate nor even possible. The passage is particularly telling as regards the strategy developed by Pratyabhijñā philosophers with respect to their Buddhist opponents: they make use of certain arguments propounded by Dharmakīrti in defense of Vijñānavāda in order to criticize the Sautrāntikas’ inference, but they also exploit this discussion to underline the superiority of their idealism over that of the Vijñānavādins. (shrink)

Working on the assumption that ideas are embedded in socio-technical arrangements which actualize them, this essay sheds light on the way the Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC) achieves the Lisbon strategic goal: to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world . Rather than framing the issue in utilitarian terms, it focuses attention on quantified indicators, comparable statistics and common targets resulting from the increasing practice of intergovernmental benchmarking, in order to tackle the following questions: how does (...) the OMC go about co-ordinating Member States through the benchmarking of national policies? And to what extent does this managerial device impact the path of European construction? Beyond the ideological and discursive construction of the competitive imperative, this technology of government transforms it into an indefinite discipline (Foucault) which constantly urges decision-makers to hit the top of the charts. This contribution thus argues that the practice of intergovernmental benchmarking is far from being neutral in purpose and effect. On the contrary, it lays the foundation for building a competitive Europe which unites Member States through competition. (shrink)

"Isabelle Stengers presents us with a new way of understanding a remarkably diverse range of sciences and their relation to a material and living world. Playing with a position both inside the practices that constitute and transform science and outside the sciences as their mode of conceptualization, Stengers explores the limits, constraints, and inventions that fuse modern science and contemporary society." Elizabeth Grosz --.

Several tasks in artificial intelligence require the ability to find models about knowledge dynamics. They include belief revision, fusion and belief merging, and abduction. In this paper, we exploit the algebraic framework of mathematical morphology in the context of propositional logic and define operations such as dilation or erosion of a set of formulas. We derive concrete operators, based on a semantic approach, that have an intuitive interpretation and that are formally well behaved, to perform revision, fusion and abduction. Computation (...) and tractability are addressed, and simple examples illustrate the main results. (shrink)

In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, an important conceptual battleground for democratic theorists ought to be, it would seem, the capitalist firm. We are now painfully aware that the typical model of government in so-called investor-owned companies remains profoundly oligarchic, hierarchical, and unequal. Renewing with the literature of the 1970s and 1980s on workplace democracy, a few political theorists have started to advocate democratic reforms of the workplace by relying on an analogy between firm and state. To (...) the extent that a firm is an organization comparable to the state, it too ought to be ruled along democratic lines. Our paper tests the robustness of the analogy between firm and state by considering six major objections to it: the objection from a difference in ends, the objection from shareholders’ property rights, the objection from worker’s consent, the objection from workers’ exit opportunities, the objection from workers’ expertise, and the objection from the fragility of firms. We find all of these objections wanting. While the paper does not ambition to settle the issue of workplace democracy at once, our goal is to pave the way for a more in-depth study of the ways in which firms and states can be compared and the possible implications this may have for our understanding of the nature of managerial authority and the governance of firms. (shrink)

Depuis qu'elles existent, les sciences dites exactes se prétendent différentes des autres savoirs. Comment comprendre cette prétention? Faut-il, à la manière des épistémologues anglo-saxons ou de Karl Popper, tenter d'identifier les critères qui la justifient? Peut-on, suivant le modèle nouveau des études sociales des sciences, y voir une simple croyance? Ce livre propose un dépassement fructueux de l'opposition, apparemment irréconciliable, entre ces deux approches des sciences. Et si la tension entre objectivité scientifique et croyance était justement constitutive des sciences, enjeu (...) des pratiques inventées et réinventées par les scientifiques? Réussir à parler des sciences avec humour, sans en faire un objet de vénération, ni de dénonciation, en restant au plus proche de la passion des scientifiques, tel est ici le pari d'Isabelle Stengers. Mais ce livre ne se limite pas à un discours sur les sciences. Il s'agit bien plutôt de prolonger l'histoire de leur invention. Comment comprendre les liens multiples entre la science et les pouvoirs qui la mobilisent aujourd'hui? Comment concevoir les rapports entre science, expertise et démocratie? La nouveauté de L'invention des sciences modernes est de faire de ces différents problèmes intellectuels, pratiques et politiques les enjeux du processus par où pourrait s'inventer et se renouveler l'identité même des sciences. (shrink)

Things metaphysics can learn from physics Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-3 DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9515-z Authors Isabelle Drouet, Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, Université Catholique de Louvain, Place du cardinal Mercier 14, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

Résumé Dans ce dossier, le rapport de Deleuze et Guattari au Marxisme est appréhendé principalement par l’intermédiaire de ces deux ouvrages majeurs que sont L’Anti-Œdipe et Mille plateaux. En guise d’introduction aux articles qui suivent, nous avons souhaité revenir sur la trajectoire spécifique de ces deux auteurs et sur la manière dont leur propre rapport à Marx s’inscrit dans une période où le signifiant « Marx » était surchargé d’enjeux théoriques et politiques et objet de stratégies d’appropriation diverses. Nous avons (...) interrogé à ce propos une spécialiste de Deleuze, Anne Sauvagnargues ( Deleuze et l’art, PUF, 2005 ; Deleuze, l’empirisme transcendantal, PUF, 2008) et Isabelle Garo, spécialiste de Marx, qui vient de publier un ouvrage où Deleuze apparaît comme l’une des figures symptomatiques des transformations du rapport à la politique qui caractérisent les années 1970 ( Foucault, Deleuze, Althusser & Marx, Éditions Demopolis, 2011). (shrink)

_In two parts, this review essay focuses on the question of contradiction between a universal ethic and its partial application. Following the presentation of Kant’s position the author’s key reframing arguments are discussed in relation to the globalizing eighteenth-century economy. A persistent problem of translation will conclude part one. Part two argues for a wider historical framework that includes the eighteenth century’s emancipatory theory and practice. The reviewer supports the author’s call for further teaching and research into the book’s themes._ (...) _ _. (shrink)

Prepared for an ANU Humanities Research Centre Symposium in early August 2003, these notes may be considered as a comment on Brian Massumi’s proposition that ‘a political ecology would be a social technology of belonging, assuming coexistence and co-becoming as the habitat of practices’.

There have been a number of attempts to apply mechanism-related concepts to the notion of extended cognition. Such accounts appeal to the idea that extended cognitive routines are realized by mechanisms that transcend some salient border or boundary. The present paper describes some of the challenges confronting the effort to develop a mechanistic account of extended cognition. In particular, it describes five problems that must be resolved if we are to make sense of the idea that extended cognition can be (...) understood via an appeal to extended mechanisms. These problems are intended to guide the philosophical effort to develop a mechanistic account of extended cognition. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a notable increase in the production of scientific expertise by large multidisciplinary groups. The issue we address is how reports may be written by such groups in spite of their size and of formidable obstacles: complexity of subject matter, uncertainty, and scientific disagreement. Our focus is on the International Panel on Climate Change, unquestionably the best-known case of such collective scientific expertise. What we show is that the organization of work within the IPCC aims to make (...) it possible to produce documents that are indeed expert reports. To do so, we first put forward the epistemic norms that apply to expert reports in general, that is, the properties that reports should have in order to be useful and to help decision-making. Section 2 claims that these properties are: intelligibility, relevance and accuracy. Based on this analysis, section 3 points to the difficulties of having IPCC reports indeed satisfying these norms. We then show how the organization of work within the IPCC aims at and to a large extent secures intelligibility, relevance and accuracy, with the result that IPCC reports can be relied on for decision-making. Section 4 focuses on the fundamentals of IPCC’s work organization--that is, division of labour within the IPCC--while section 5 investigates three frameworks that were introduced over the course of the functioning of the IPCC: the reviewing procedure of IPCC reports, the language that IPCC authors use to express uncertainty and the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. Concluding remarks are offered in section 6. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Correspondence: Alva Noë, Department of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley CA 94720-2390, USA. _Email: [email protected]_ Evan Thompson, Philosophy Department, York University, 4700 Keele Street, North York, Ontario, M3J 1P3, Canada. _Email: [email protected]_.

The paper provides a new critical perspective on the propensity interpretation of fitness, by investigating its relationship to the propensity interpretation of probability. Two main conclusions are drawn. First, the claim that fitness is a propensity cannot be understood properly: fitness is not a propensity in the sense prescribed by the propensity interpretation of probability. Second, this interpretation of probability is inessential for explanations proposed by the PIF in evolutionary biology. Consequently, interpreting the probabilistic dimension of fitness in terms of (...) propensities is neither a strong motivation in favor of this interpretation, nor a possible target for substantial criticism. (shrink)

L'ambition de ce livre, et elle est grande, est de faire vivre à son lecteur, qu'il soit ou non philosophe, le trajet fulgurant qui, en quelques années, a transformé le mathématicien Alfred North Whitehead en philosophe spéculatif. De la pierre grise que je vois là jusqu'à la création du Dieu qu'exige la cohérence spéculative, il s'agit bel et bien de cette " libre et sauvage création de concepts " associée à la philosophie anglaise par Deleuze et Guattari dans Qu'est-ce que (...) la philosophie? Mais " sauvage " signifie d'abord ici l'humour d'une mise à l'aventure de tous les " nous savons bien " qui rassurent, et l'expérimentation tranquille des concepts qui portent à leur plus haut degré, pour les faire converger, liberté et contrainte, audace et obligation. De l'aventure, nul ne devrait ramener une doctrine ou un mode de pensée unanime ; plutôt, différent pour chacun, un certain goût pour les questions qui mettent en risque, et une grande indifférence aux mots d'ordre qui prétendent nous dire comment penser. (shrink)

The article presents critical examination of theories about collective responsibility attempting to cover responsibility for historic injustices. The author will also try to establish the possibility of collective responsibility for the present members of the group to make recompense for the injustices committed by their ancestors depending on two factors expounded in the article.

The processing of fluent speech involves complex computational steps that begin with the segmentation of the continuous flow of speech sounds into syllables and words. One question that naturally arises pertains to the type of syllabic information that speech processes act upon. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to profile regions, using a combination of whole-brain and exploratory anatomical region-of-interest (ROI) approaches, that were sensitive to syllabic information during speech perception by parametrically manipulating syllabic complexity along two dimensions: (1) (...) individual syllable complexity, and (2) sequence complexity (supra-syllabic). We manipulated the complexity of the syllable by using the simplest syllable template—a consonant and vowel (CV)-and inserting an additional consonant to create a complex onset (CCV). The supra-syllabic complexity was manipulated by creating sequences composed of the same syllable repeated 6 times (e.g. /pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa/) and sequences of 3 different syllables each repeated twice (e.g. /pa-ta-ka-pa-ta-ka/). This parametrical design allowed us to identify brain regions sensitive to (1) syllabic complexity independent of supra-syllabic complexity, (2) supra-syllabic complexity independent of syllabic complexity and, (3) both syllabic and supra-syllabic complexity. High-resolution scans were acquired for 15 healthy adults. An exploratory anatomical ROI analysis of the supratemporal plane (STP) identified bilateral regions within the anterior two-third of the planum temporale, the primary auditory cortices as well as the anterior two-third of the superior temporal gyrus that showed different patterns of sensitivity to syllabic and supra-syllabic information. These findings demonstrate that during passive listening of syllable sequences, sublexical information is processed automatically, and sensitivity to syllabic and supra-syllabic information is localized almost exclusively within the STP. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyze an intra-personal game where a decision-maker is summarized by a succession of selves. Selves may (or may not) have conflicting interests, and earlier selves may have imperfect knowledge of the preferences of future selves. At date 1, self-1 chooses a menu, at date 2, the preferences of self-2 realize and self-2 chooses an item from the menu. We show that equilibrium choice is consistent with either a preference for flexibility, a preference for betweenness or a (...) preference for systematic restriction. Overall, the analysis reconciles the decision–theoretic approach of choice over time with the game–theoretic multiple-selves approach. (shrink)

This book promotes the research of present-day women working in ancient and medieval philosophy, with more than 60 women having contributed in some way to the volume in a fruitful collaboration. It contains 22 papers organized into ten distinct parts spanning the sixth century BCE to the fifteenth century CE. Each part has the same structure: it features, first, a paper which sets up the discussion, and then, one or two responses that open new perspectives and engage in further reflections. (...) Our authors’ contributions address pivotal moments and players in the history of philosophy: women philosophers in antiquity, Cleobulina of Rhodes, Plato, Lucretius, Bardaisan of Edessa, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Plotinus, Porphyry, Peter Abelard, Robert Kilwardby, William Ockham, John Buridan, and Isotta Nogarola. The result is a thought-provoking collection of papers that will be of interest to historians of philosophy from all horizons. Far from being an isolated effort, this book is a contribution to the ever-growing number of initiatives which endeavour to showcase the work of women in philosophy. (shrink)

Background Minimal research has been done to determine how well European nursing students understand the core principles of academic integrity and how often they deviate from good academic practice. Aim The aim of this study was to find out what educational needs nursing students have in terms of academic integrity. Research design A quantitative cross-sectional study in the form of a survey of nursing students was conducted via questionnaire in the fall of 2020. Participants The sample was composed of 79 (...) students in the BScN and MScN programs at Zürich University of Applied Sciences. Ethical considerations An application for a non-competence clearance was approved by the Ethics Committee in Zurich (BASEC No. Req-2020-00868). The survey was anonymous, and informed consent was obtained prior to participation. Results The participants had a high level of confidence in their own knowledge but were in many cases unable to correctly identify clear-cut examples of misconduct and to differentiate them from questionable practices. About 13% of the participants admitted that during their university education they had copied shorter passages from other sources into their own text without marking them as quotes. Conclusions The study documents extensive knowledge gaps among nursing students regarding both academic misconduct and questionable practices and indicates a need for improved academic integrity training. (shrink)

In den Mittelpunkt der Schrift stellt Nicolaus Cusanus die Figur eines Laien (idiota), der – als Gegenpol zum universitär ausgebildeten Philosophen – den einfachen Ungebildeten und damit die wahre Weisheit repräsentiert, die dem Geist des Menschen und seinen Potentialen entspricht. Statt auf Bücherwissen und Autoritäten setzt er auf das eigene Philosophieren, das immer neu nach der Wahrheit fragt. Der Laie verkörpert die cusanische Philosophie in besonderem Maße: Fundamentale anthropologische, erkenntnistheoretische und metaphysische Bestimmungen des Cusanus finden sich hier in einer Gestalt (...) vereint. Aus dem Wissen heraus, dass menschliches Erkennen immer nur mutmaßend sein kann, geht es um das rechte kritische Verhältnis zu den eigenen Erkenntnismöglichkeiten. An der Figur des Laien macht Cusanus deutlich, dass dies keineswegs in einen erkenntnistheoretischen Skeptizismus führt, der die Möglichkeit sicheren Wissens von vornherein für nicht erreichbar und infolgedessen alle Erkenntnisbemühungen für überflüssig hält, sondern dass darin das unendliche und dynamische Potential des Menschen zum Ausdruck kommt, sich unermüdlich an die Wahrheit anzunähern. In der Geschichte der Erkenntnistheorie vor Kant spielt "Der Laie über den Geist" somit eine fundamentale Rolle. (shrink)

Idealism is the core of the Pratyabhijñã philosophy: the main goal of Utpaladeva (fl. c. 925–950 AD) and of his commentator Abhinavagupta (fl. c. 975–1025 AD) is to establish that nothing exists outside of consciousness. In the course of their demonstration, these Śaiva philosophers endeavour to distinguish their idealism from that of a rival system, the Buddhist Vijñānavāda. This article aims at examining the concept of otherness (paratva) as it is presented in the Pratyabhijñā philosophy in contrast with that of (...) the Vijñānavādins’. Although, according to the Pratyabhijñā, the other subjects are not ultimately real since all subjects are nothing but limited manifestations of a single absolute subject, the fact that we are aware of their existence in the practical world has to be accounted for. The Vijñānavādins explain it by arguing the we infer the others’ existence. The Pratyabhijñā philosophers, while refuting their opponents’ reasoning as it is expounded in Dharmakīrti’s Santānāntarasiddhi, develop a particulary original analysis of our awareness of the others, stating that this awareness is neither a perception (pratyakṣa) nor an inference (anumāna), but rather a guess (ūha) in which we sense the others’ freedom (svātantrya). (shrink)

Participation of the Public in Science: Towards a New Kind of Scientific Practice Participation of the public in science has been the object of an increasing number of social and political philosophical studies, but there is still hardly any epistemological study of the topic. While it has been objected that involvement of the public is a threat to the integrity of science, the apparent indifference of philosophers of science seems to testify to its lack of relevance to conceptions of scientific (...) activity. I argue both that it is not a threat to science and that it is relevant to philosophy of science by showing that it constitutes a new kind of epistemic practice. Two main objections to the idea that the involvement of non-scientists, with their situated perspective and contextual values, can form an epistemic practice will be addressed: the first bears on the epistemic potentialities of the cooperation between scientist and non-scientists; the second on the possibility that this cooperation takes the form of a practice. (shrink)

In Book VI of the Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laertius presents Cynicism as a philosophical school with origins in Socrates and prefiguring Stoicism, through the sequence: Socrates–Antisthenes–Diogenes–Crates–Zeno. However, the part of the sequence linking Diogenes to Crates is not unanimously accepted. Diogenes Laertius himself mentions that Crates had two other teachers: Bryson of Achaea and Stilpo. The first is unknown, but the sources tell us enough about the second to discern certain similarities between his philosophy and that (...) of Crates. When he wrote Book VI, Diogenes Laertius dismissed this parallel tradition connecting Crates to the Megarian school, preferring to link Stoicism to Socrates via Cynicism exclusively. Although Crates is unquestionably the philosophical heir of Diogenes, it is quite possible that he may have been influenced by both the Cynics and the Megarians. (shrink)

Background: Walking while performing a secondary task walking) increases cognitive workload in young adults. To date, few studies have used neurophysiological measures in combination to subjective measures to assess cognitive workload during a walking task. This combined approach can provide more insights into the amount of cognitive resources in relation with the perceived mental effort involving in a walking task.Research Question: The objective was to examine cognitive workload in young adults during walking conditions varying in complexity.Methods: Twenty-five young adults performed (...) four conditions: usual walking, simple DT walking, complex DT walking and standing while subtracting. During the walking task, mean speed, cadence, stride time, stride length, and their respective coefficient of variation were recorded. Cognitive workload will be measured through changes in oxy- and deoxy-hemoglobin during walking in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and perceived mental demand score from NASA-TLX questionnaire.Results: In young adults, ΔHbO2 in the DLPFC increased from usual walking to both DT walking conditions and standing while subtracting condition. ΔHbO2 did not differ between the simple and complex DT and between the complex DT and standing while subtracting condition. Perceived mental demand gradually increased with walking task complexity. As expected, all mean values of gait parameters were altered according to task complexity. CV of speed, cadence and stride time were significantly higher during DT walking conditions than during usual walking whereas CV of stride length was only higher during complex DT walking than during usual walking.Significance: Young adults had greater cognitive workload in the two DT walking conditions compared to usual walking. However, only the mental demand score from NASA-TLX questionnaire discriminated simple from complex DT walking. Subjective measure provides complementary information to objective one on changes in cognitive workload during challenging walking tasks in young adults. These results may be useful to improve our understanding of cognitive workload during walking. (shrink)