This essay attempts to reconcile the debate between Hu Shi's historical perspective and D.T. Suzuki's practice perspective concerning Zen Buddhism.

This paper examines Confucian, Daoist and Legalist view of self-realization zide 自得.

In 1997, David Armstrong argued that the world is a world of states of affairs. In his latest book, Truth and Truthmakers, he remains strongly committed to the existence of states of affairs, despite now advocating an ontology in which they are not needed, 'as an ontological extra'. States of affairs remain needed, Armstrong says, 'to act as truthmakers for predicative truths'. In this paper, I attempt to shed light on what Armstrong might mean by this claim. While there is (...) a straightforward sense in which states of affairs are not needed in Armstrong's amended ontology, I suggest that Armstrong might be charitably interpreted in a manner that justifies his claim. However, in clarifying the manner in which states of affairs remain needed in Armstrong's ontology, it becomes unclear whether they are needed in any 'deep' sense, or rather are merely parochial to his ontology. I examine Armstrong's rejection of Resemblance Nominalism on the grounds that it does not provide adequate 'minimal' truthmakers. I then argue that he has significant additional work to do in explaining this concept before his rejection of Resemblance Nominalism can be justified, and thus before the need for states of affairs can be asserted generally, rather than just within particular ontologies, such as Armstrong's amended one. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TOWARD A GENERAL THEORY OF FICTION by James D. Parsons When nelson Goodman writes, "All fiction is literal, literary falsehood," he seems to be disregarding at least one noteworthy tradition.1 The tradition I have in mind includes works by Jeremy Bendiam, Hans Vaihinger, Tobias Dantzig, Wallace Stevens, and a host ofother writers in many fields who have been laboring for more man two centuries to clear the ground (...) for a general theory of fiction. Such a general dieory would, if its exponents are right about its relevemce, be situated at the very heart of die law, literature, religion, science, mathematics — in fact, of humem life itself. Fiction dien would be no neirrow litereiry falsehood, but a kind of pressure, eis Wedlace Stevens said, which die imagination exerts "against die pressure of reality," and which "helps us to live our lives,"2 or, in Hans Vaihingens metaphor, "a scaffolding afterwards to be demolished" 3 — that is, elfter it heis served its constructive purpose. A fiction is a vitally useful creation of die mind corresponding to nothing in the real world. Most people eire aware of some of these fictions, from the perfect geometric figures of Euclid to the black box of contemporary axiomatics. There are many odiers. The notion diat all human beings are equal before die law is a fiction that can serve opposing purposes: it can work as an instrument for securing greater justice in the courts and in society, or it can function as ceimouflage, helping to perpetuate em unjust legal system and em oppressive social order — emd probably in any actual situation it serves both purposes at once. In die science of mechanics the idea of a pure vacuum, in which moving objects meet with no resistance, was for some centuries a useful fiction diat made possible the exact mathematiced analysis of motion in memy forms — another useful fiction. The notion of normality in psychology — mat diere is a universal standard of reference for human behavior — is stdl utilized by clinical and laboratory workers in the field, in spite of the metssive sociological emd ethnographic criticisms that have been leveled against it. In science generally, the idea that 92 James D. Parsons93 diere is a community of experts who by dieir combined influence decide what the trudi is in every field is a fiction diat seems to have come to the end of its usefulness, diough some philosophers have written about it as if it were a reality and not a fiction at edl. The fictions I have cited so far are none of them literary, nor être diey fedse in the ordinetry meaning of the word. They are simply not true; they describe nothing mat exists, except in die mind, emd cem be considered false only if one forgets what they eire emd tries, illegitimately, to apply tests of trudi to them in a direct way. Among the fictions mat might be called literary are the fictions derived from mydis. Now, a myth is a story told in answer to a question or a series of questions that has never been asked, eidier about the real world or (most likely) about the perennial performance of a ritual. The mydi is designed to forestall the questioning, because the questions that might be raised would be too embarrassing or because questions about some aspects of reality ceuinot be formulated without distorting our relation to them. These are the aspects of reedity that can be viewed only out of die corner of the eye, that disappear when we focus our gaze upon diem, and mat can be identified only indirectly.4 The more explicitly fictional devices, too, of poetry, drama, and the novel develop out of the attempt to achieve some sort of cognizeuice of the seune aspects of reality that are related in mydis. I do not meetn to imply that literature, of which mydi is a part, is concerned only with such disconcerting or evanescent aspects of reality. Literature, like all the great realms of culture, is concerned with the whole of reality. It has to be, omerwise its more passionate, its more ediereed concerns would have no lodging place, no environment in which to maintain... (shrink)

Despite their popularity, dual process accounts of human reasoning and decision-making have come under intense scrutiny in recent years. Cognitive scientists and philosophers alike have come to question the theoretical foundations of the ‘standard view’ of dual process theory and have challenged the validity and relevance of evidence in support of it. Moreover, attempts to modify and refine dual process theory in light of these challenges have generated additional concerns about its applicability and refutability as a scientific theory. With these (...) concerns in mind, this paper provides a critical review of dual process theory in economics, focusing on its role as a psychological framework for decision modeling in behavioral economics and neuroeconomics. I argue that the influx of criticisms against dual process theory challenge the descriptive accuracy of dualistic decision models in economics. In fact, the case can be made that the popularity of dual process theory in economics has less to do with the empirical success of dualistic decision models, and more to do with the convenience that the dual process narrative provides economists looking to explain-away decision anomalies. This leaves behavioral economists and neuroeconomists with something of a dilemma: either they stick to their purported ambitions to give a realistic description of human decision-making and give up the narrative, or they revise and restate their scientific ambitions. (shrink)

James D. Wallace treats moral considerations as beliefs about the right and wrong ways of doing things - beliefs whose source and authority are the same as any ...

McCawley supplements his earlier book—which covers such topics as presuppositional logic, the logic of mass terms and nonstandard quantifiers, and fuzzy ...

In this book James D. G. Dunn explores the nature of the religious experiences that were at the forefront of emerging Christianity.

This article applies two explanations of sexual harassment—gender dominance and sex-role spillover—in multivariate analyses of perceptions of two forms of harassment of women in legal settings by male judges and attorneys. Regression analyses of data from statewide samples of Florida judges and attorneys support the age/spillover hypothesis: Older cohorts of men are markedly less likely than are other respondents to perceive male judges' and attorneys' gender-typing behavior. Some support is also found for the age/dominance hypothesis, which predicts that younger women (...) will be especially aware of more serious forms of sexual harassment by male judges and attorneys. Younger women judges, particularly those with a feminist orientation, show markedly greater awareness of sexual advances and other dominance behaviors by male judges. (shrink)

An artificial general intelligence (AGI) might have an instrumental drive to modify its utility function to improve its ability to cooperate, bargain, promise, threaten, and resist and engage in blackmail. Such an AGI would necessarily have a utility function that was at least partially observable and that was influenced by how other agents chose to interact with it. This instrumental drive would conflict with the strong orthogonality thesis since the modifications would be influenced by the AGI’s intelligence. AGIs in highly (...) competitive environments might converge to having nearly the same utility function, one optimized to favorably influencing other agents through game theory. Nothing in our analysis weakens arguments concerning the risks of AGI. (shrink)

The perturbative approach to quantum field theory has long been viewed with suspicion by philosophers of science. This article offers a diagnosis of its conceptual problems. Drawing on Norton’s discussion of the notion of approximation I argue that perturbative QFT ought to be understood as producing approximations without specifying an underlying QFT model. This analysis leads to a reassessment of common worries about perturbative QFT. What ends up being the key issue with the approach on this picture is not mathematical (...) rigour, or the threat of inconsistency, but the need for a physical explanation of its empirical success. 1Three Worries about Perturbative Quantum Field Theory2The Perturbative Formalism 2.1Expanding the S-matrix2.2Perturbative renormalization3Approximations and Models4Perturbative Quantum Field Theory Produces Approximations5The Real Problem. (shrink)

At the empirical center of James’s theory of emotion is the prediction that people induced to act emotionally will report feeling the corresponding emotion. While the research more or less inspired by James is complex, it is also large. Reisenzein and Stephan (2014) identify a number of problems in this literature, but we think, on balance, the research supports James’s hypothesis. At a minimum, there are literally hundreds of studies showing that people induced to act as if (...) they felt an emotion, an attitude, or a judgment report those feelings. Critics of James’s theory are left with the task of accounting for these findings. (shrink)

Geography and Ethics examines the place of geography in ethics and of ethics in geography by drawing together specially commissioned contributors from distinguished scholars from around the world.

Aldo Leopold’s “Land Ethic” centers on the maxim: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” I contribute to the critical appraisal of this maxim by providing answers to the following questions: (1) what is referred to by the phrase “the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community”? (2) What “things” tend to preserve or threaten the integrity, stability, and beauty ofthe biotic (...) community? (3) Are the integrity, stability, and beauty ofthe biotic community goods such that preserving them is right and failing to do so wrong? (shrink)

Thinking About Thinking: Mind and Meaning in the Era of Techno-Nihilism addresses our existential crisis by reminding us of the conditions for meaning that have been obscured by the modern technological mentality. Madden weaves together disparate insights from Wittgenstein, Hegel, Aristotle, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Nietzsche, Sophocles, and others in an attempt to account for our mindedness in terms of its inextricable connection to a world capable of inspiring our care. The mind is not a discrete entity locked behind the skull or (...) withdrawn into a ghostly realm, but a participation in an inheritance (biological and cultural) held in common with other participants, and taking responsibility for that world is crucial for the meaning. The ever-increasing technological mediation of our lives undermines this worldliness. We are subsequently "losing our minds," and as our mindedness fades, so goes our sense of dignity and value. Madden makes this case deploying insights from phenomenology, analytic philosophy, Aristotelianism, neuroscience, and cognitive science, and along the way confronts the mind-body problem, freedom, artificial intelligence, transhumanism, and nihilism. More importantly, he invites the reader into an accessible dialogue concerning issues of grave importance to the meaning of our lives. (shrink)

(1997). Michel Foucault: Problematising the individual and constituting ‘the’ self. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 32-49. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.1997.tb00526.x.

Assuming Martin's Axiom, we compute the value of the cofinality of the symmetric group on the natural numbers. We also show that Martin's Axiom does not decide the value of the covering number of a related Mycielski ideal.

Lyotard talks of performativity or the subsumption of education to the efficient functioning of the social system. Education is no longer to be concerned with the pursuit of ideals such as that of personal autonomy or emancipation, but with the means, techniques or skills that contribute to the efficient operation of the state in the world market and contribute to maintaining the internal cohesion and legitimation of the state. But this requires individuals of a certain kind -- not Kantian autonomous (...) persons but Foucault's normalized and governable individuals. In constituting such individuals discourse is critically important. But how discourse effects this through the force of language is not fully developed by Foucault. This paper draws upon the performative account of language offered by John Austin to develop more fully comments made by Foucault on the force or effects of language in constituting normalized and governable individuals for the march of performativity. (shrink)

The process of antigenic variation in parasitic African trypanosomes is a remarkable mechanism for outwitting the immune system of the mammalian host, but it requires a delicate balancing act for the monoallelic expression, folding and transport of a single variant surface glycoprotein (VSG). Only one of hundreds of VSG genes is expressed at time, and this from just one of ≈15 dedicated expression sites. By switching expression of VSGs the parasite presents a continuously shifting antigenic facade leading to prolonged chronic (...) infections lasting months to years. The basics of VSG structure and switching have been known for several decades, but recent studies have brought higher resolution to many aspects this process. New VSG structures, in silico modeling of infections, studies of VSG codon usage, and experimental ablation of VSG expression provide insights that inform how this remarkable system may have evolved. (shrink)

James D Marshall; John Wilson on the Necessity of Punishment, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 18, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 97–104, https://doi.org.

Biological naturalism claims that all psychological phenomena can be causally, though not ontologically, reduced to neurological processes, where causal reduction is usually understood in terms of supervenience. After presenting John Searle’s version of biological naturalism in some detail, I argue that the particular supervenience relation on which this account depends is dubious. Specifically, the fact that either realism or nominalism is the case implies that there is one fact about belief that does not supervene on neurophysiological processes. Biological naturalism is (...) thereby defeated because it cannot account for belief. Ialso address three likely objections to this argument. (shrink)

Two recurring ideologies are used to explore and explain differences in approach to media coverage and problems, both by those within the media and by critics outside the media. Models of Left (individualism, liberty, human happiness) and Right (achievement, maintenance of norms) are used to map three contemporary journalism issues: professionalism, journalist as Good Samaritan, and objective reporting. Each readily lends itself to ideological and para-ideological analysis. Ideological constructs made a significant contribution to the mapping and assessing of ethical and (...) professional media problems. (shrink)

James D Marshall; Wittgenstein on Rules: implications for authority and discipline in education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 19, Issue 1, 30 May.

James D Marshall, Michael Peters, Miles Shepheard; Brent's Transcendental Arguments for the Forms of Knowledge, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, I.

Critical thinking, considered as a version of informallogic, must consider emotions and personal attitudesin assessing assertions and conclusions in anyanalysis of discourse. It must therefore presupposesome notion of the self. Critical theory may be seenas providing a substantive and non-neutral positionfor the exercise of critical thinking. It thereforemust presuppose some notion of the self. This paperargues for a Foucauldean position on the self toextend critical theory and provide a particularposition on the self for critical thinking. Thisposition on the self is (...) developed from moretraditional accounts of the self from Descartes toSchopenhauer, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. (shrink)