One of the key ethical debates in Russian religious thought, initiated by Leo Tolstoy, concerned the question of nonresistance to evil by force. The purpose of this article is to assess the influence of Kant’s ethics and philosophy of religion on the course of this debate and to determine the place and significance of the arguments and considerations expressed on this issue by Semyon Frank in the early and late periods (1908 and 1940s) of his work. To this end I (...) reconstruct the general course of the debate, notably the positions and arguments of Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Solovyov, Ivan Ilyin and Nikolai Berdyaev. Beginning with Tolstoy, Russ­ian thinkers introduced the original ethical content of the idea of nonresistance derived from the Gospel into the ethics of duty borrowed from Kant. The Tolstoy version of this idea was challenged mainly from two directions: from the Kantian grounding of the legitimacy of coercion and attempts to bring in styles of moral thinking other than the ethic of duty. Ilyin’s apolo­gia for the use of force in the struggle against evil prompted Russian émigré thinkers to take a closer look at Tolstoy’s ethical concept and pay attention to its positive content. On this basis Berdyaev and especially Frank create their version of the Christ-centered ethic of salvation which, in the perspective of “protecting the world against evil” includes the ethic of duty and links it with the possibility of using force, always a wrongful act, but one justified “in a situation of extreme need”. (shrink)

The article attempts to compare personalist aspects in the works of Vasily Zenkovsky and Vladimir Lossky. It is shown that two types of philosophical personalism (metaphysical and existentialist) in the history of Russian thought set the framework for two types of theological personalism presented respectively by Zenkovsky and Lossky. The philosophy of Lev Lopatin was the important source for the principles of Zenkovsky’s personalist vision. The relevant philosophical background on Lossky’s personalism is provided by Nikolai Berdyaev’s works. The article considers (...) the deep criticism by the French theologian Jean-Claude Larchet, who seeks to demonstrate philosophical and existentialist sources of Lossky’s theological personalism, rather than patristical ones. It is noted that the criticism addressed to Lossky’s theory may slide to challenging the very possibility of an Orthodox theological personalism as a line of thought. It is shown that Zenkovsky’s works, presenting a nonexistentialist type of personalism, do not provoke such criticism. It’s concluded that whereas Lossky’s legacy in its personalistic aspect is challenged, Zenkovsky’s personalism enables another way of conceiving “Orthodox theological personalism.”. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 98 Heft: 2 Seiten: 653-682.

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 92 Heft: 1 Seiten: 13-41.

The study provides an overview of the discussion “What is the philosophy we need?”, that took place in the frames of “Modern Ontology - XI: Ontology and Religion” International Scientific and Practical Conference. The discussion spread around three main areas of philosophy teaching: philosophy as the history of philosophy, philosophy as the basis for the worldview, and philosophy as a system-categorical knowledge about the world as a whole. Supporters of the first position demonstrated the content diversity of philosophy, often emphasizing (...) the teacher’s right to choose historical and philosophical material, this position caused criticism from other conference participants, whose main argument was the erosion of the philosophy content. Regarding the second position in the frames of discussion, its participants either denied the involvement of philosophy in the worldview formation, or believed that philosophy is the basis for the worldview, and the task of philosophy, in particular, is to form the worldview of students. As arguments, supporters of this approach cited the need for the philosophy in the transformation of modern spiritual life in Russia. This approach was in harmony with the position of the discussion participants, who advocated a system-categorical approach in philosophy teaching. This approach supposed the combination of abstract section (Ontology) with a specific section, where it would be necessary to consider the three following sections of philosophy: 1 - philosophy of nature, 2 - philosophy of socio-anthropological reality, 3 - philosophy of religion. At the same time, the supporters of this approach suggested using the substantive part of Soviet philosophy as a basis, which needs to be transformed taking into account the achievements of modern knowledge. (shrink)

The article provides a comprehensive analysis of scientific approaches to the formation of legal regulation of relations arising in the development and use of artificial intelligence technologies, their socio-legal status, as well as social, ethical, methodological, and practical legal issues with an emphasis on the fundamentals of natural legal doctrine. The author’s vision of the concept of human interaction and artificial intelligence from the standpoint of legal relations is given. Emphasis is placed on the need to study the problems that (...) arise in this area, within the framework of information law, as a complex branch of law and sociohumanitarian informology—at the level of an interdisciplinary approach. Ways to improve the mechanisms and methods of legal support in the field of artificial intelligence through the development and implementation of technological and legal methods as an innovative tools and effective tools for special technological impact. (shrink)

Unfounded—conspiracy and health—beliefs about COVID-19 have accompanied the pandemic worldwide. Here, we examined cross-nationally the structure and correlates of these beliefs with an 8-item scale, using a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. We obtained a two-factor model of unfounded (conspiracy and health) beliefs with good internal structure (average CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.05, SRMR = 0.04), but a high correlation between the two factors (average latent factor correlation = 0.57). This model was replicable across 50 countries (total N = 13,579), (...) as evidenced by metric invariance between countries (CFI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.06, SRMS = 0.07) as well as scalar invariance across genders (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03) and educational levels (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03). Also, lower levels of education, more fear of COVID-19, and more cynicism were weakly associated with stronger conspiracy and health beliefs. The study contributes to knowledge about the structure of unfounded beliefs, and reveals the potential relevance of affective (i.e., fear of COVID-19) and cognitive (i.e., cynicism) factors along with demographics, in endorsing such beliefs. In summary, we obtained cross-cultural evidence for the distinctiveness of unfounded conspiracy and health beliefs about COVID-19 in terms of their structure and correlates. (shrink)

Dieser Artikel stellt Cora Diamonds Begriff des Mitgeschöpfs dar und untersucht dessen Relevanz für tierethische und tierpolitische Diskurse. Die traditionelle Tierethik hat eine rationalistische, naturalistische und reduktionistische Tendenz. Diamonds Moralphilosophie stellt dem einen praxissensitiven Ansatz gegenüber, der Emotionen und die moralische Imagination umfasst, wobei Diamond die Bedeutung des Menschseins betont. Letztere entspringt zwar einem epistemischen Anthropozentrismus, jedoch folgt aus diesem keine Mensch-Tier-Hierarchie: Diamond plädiert dafür, andere Tiere als Mitgeschöpfe, als Gefährten auf sterblichen Pfaden, zu begreifen. Dabei zeigt Diamond an ihrer (...) Interpretation von J.M. Coetzees The Lives of Animals, wie Konzepte von anderen Tieren auf das eigene Selbstverständnis rückwirken. Abschließend erörtert der Artikel den Vorwurf des Quietismus und die Schwierigkeit der politischen Umsetzbarkeit in Diamonds Philosophie. -/- [This article outlines Cora Diamond’s concept of the fellow creature and examines its relevance for animal ethics and animal politics. Diamond’s moral philosophy contrasts the rationalistic, naturalistic, and reductionistic tendency of traditional animal ethics with a practice-oriented approach that encompasses emotions and the moral imagination. Diamond emphasizes the importance of being human, which emanates from an epistemic anthropocentrism, but from which no human-animal hierarchy follows: She pleads for recognizing other animals as fellow creatures, as companions on mortal paths. In her interpretation of J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals, Diamond shows how conceptualizing other animals influences one’s own self-understanding. Finally, the article discusses the reproach of quietism and the difficulty of political feasibility in Diamond’s philosophy.]. (shrink)

This article is an overview of the evolution of Islamic radicalism during the 19 th - 21 st centuries. It demonstrates that nineteenth century Islamic radicalism is based on the ideas of pan-Islamism, whose main representatives are J. al-Din al-Afghani and M. Abduh. In turn, Islamic radicalism of the twentieth to twentyfirst centuries is based on the ideas of Islamic fundamentalism. Its main representatives are H. Al-Banna, S. Qutb, the Deoband movement, al-Maududi and R. Khomeyni. Pan-Islamic theories of the 19 (...) th -20t h centuries are based on the thesis that people who seek liberation from colonial oppression should merge. However, scholars have different views on the union of the Muslim world. It was, once, regarded as a combination of historical circumstances and the political realities of the nineteenth century. These were further shaped by the basic idea of Islamic fundamentalism in the twentieth to twentyfirst centuries, which is Salafiyya, or a return to “pure Islam”, a revival of active faith traditions and the union of all walks of life under the Sharia law and strict interpretation and application of its rules. The instruments used by Islamic fundamentalists and radicals to implement it have been the Islam-related slogans for Takfir and Jihad. But in the 21st century, integration and globalization have started playing a significant role. Various geopolitical forces are using various tools, including the idea of Islamic radicalism. (shrink)

BackgroundApproximately 7% of the general population is affected by an orphan disease, which, in the United States, is defined as affecting fewer than 1 in 1500 people. Disease awareness is often low and time-to-diagnosis delayed. Different legislations worldwide have created incentives for pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs for orphan diseases. A journalistic article in Bloomberg Businessweek has claimed that pharmaceutical companies have tried marketing orphan drugs by placing a specific disease into the popular television series “House, M.D.” which features diagnostic (...) journeys and was produced between 2004 and 2012. This study aimed to describe the presentation of orphan diseases in the television series “House, M.D.”, to test in an exploratory fashion the hypothesis that treatable orphan conditions are overrepresented in “House, M.D.” and to discuss whether such marketing practices may or may not be ethical.MethodsA list of all medical cases depicted in the television series “House, M.D.” was obtained and classified as orphan or non-orphan according to the Orphanet database. The ratios of orphan diseases among all diseases, such with an orphan drug designation and such with an orphan drug approval by the FDA were then compared with conservative approximations of real world conditions (chi-squared tests for equality of proportions). STROBE criteria were respected.ResultsOut of a total of n = 181 different medical diagnoses, n = 42 (23.2%) were orphan diseases. The difference in percentages in between “House, M.D.” and reality was not statistically significant for orphan diseases overall (p = 0.96), yet was statistically significantly higher for both orphan diseases with one or more orphan drug designations (p = 0.0192) and such with one or more approved orphan drugs (p < 0.0001).ConclusionsOrphan diseases with a designated and/or approved orphan drug were overrepresented in the television series “House, M.D.” with statistical significance while orphan diseases overall were not. This may be explained by (so far) undocumented efforts of pharmaceutical companies to place their orphan drugs in the television series, as described in the article in Bloomberg Businessweek. Further research is needed into marketing practices in popular and emerging media formats. (shrink)

The spiritual geography of Russian cosmism. General characteristics ; Recent definitions of cosmism -- Forerunners of Russian cosmism. Vasily Nazarovich Karazin (1773-1842) ; Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev (1749-1802) ; Poets: Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, (1711-1765) and Gavriila Romanovich Derzhavin (1743-1816) ; Prince Vladimir Fedorovich Odoevsky (1803-1869) ; Aleksander Vasilyevich Sukhovo-Kobylin (1817-1903) -- The Russian philosophical context. Philosophy as a passion ; The destiny of Russia ; Thought as a call for action ; The totalitarian cast of mind -- The religious and spiritual (...) context. The kingdom of god on earth ; Hesychasm: two great Russian saints ; The Third Rome ; Pre-Christian antecedents -- The Russian esoteric context. Early searches for "deep wisdom" ; Popular magic ; Higher magic in the time of Peter the Great ; Esotericism after Peter the Great ; Theosophy and anthroposophy -- Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov (1829-1903), the philosopher of the common task ; The one idea ; The unacknowledged prince ; The village teacher ; First disciple: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy ; The Moscow librarian ; Last years: Askhabad: the only portrait -- The "common task" ; Esoteric dimensions of the "common task" ; Fedorov's legacy: projectivism, delo, regulation -- The religious cosmists. Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov (1853-1900) ; Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (1871-1944) ; Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky (1882-1937) ; Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948) -- The scientific cosmists. Konstantin Edouardovich Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) ; Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863-1945) ; Alexander Leonidovich Chizhevsky (1897-1964) ; Vasily Feofilovich Kuprevich (1897-1969) -- Promethean theurgy. Life-creation ; Cultural immortalism ; God-building ; Re-aiming the arrows of Eros ; Technological utopianism ; Occultism -- Fedorov's twentieth century followers. Nikolai Pavlovich Peterson (1844-1919) and Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kozhevnikov (1852-1917) ; Svyatogor and the biocosmists ; New wine and the universal task ; Alexander Konstantinovich Gorsky (1886-1943) and Nikolai Alexandrovich Setnitsky (1888-1937) ; Valerian Nikolaevich Muravyov (1885-1932) ; Vasily Nikolaevich Chekrygin (1897-1922) -- Cosmism and its offshoots today. The N.F. Fedorov museum-library ; The Tsiolkovsky museum and Chizhevsky center ; ISRICA - Institute for Scientific Research in Cosmic Anthropoecology ; Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev (1912-1992) and neo-eurasianism ; The hyperboreans ; Scientific immortalism: Igor Vishev, Danila Medvedev ; Conclusions about the Russian cosmists. (shrink)

Das vorliegende Buch ist bereits der dreizehnte Band der Reihe Roman Imperial Biographies. Sein Verfasser, der an der Boise State University (Idaho) lehrende Althistoriker Charles Matson Odahl (O.), ist seit den späten 70er Jahren durch eine Reihe einschlägiger Publikationen zu Konstantin und der Spätantike hervorgetreten.

The article analyzes the historical experience of creation and development of military medical aircraft in Ukraine from the 1920s. to the present. In particular, reviewed the activity of Design Bureaus of K. Kalinin and O. Antonov. Special attention is paid to the creation of military medical aircraft after Ukraine gained independence in 1991 and their application to evacuate the wounded during Armed conflict in the east of Ukraine in 2014-2016. The first attempt of creation a sanitary aircraft were made (...) in Ukraine back in the 1920s under the leadership of Konstantin Kalinin. In a qualitatively new level was realized military medical aircraft designed by bureau Oleg Antonov, created in the second half of 1970s aircraft emergency resuscitative-surgical care An-26M "Spasatel'" Accumulated experience allowed at the beginning of 2000s a similar purpose for the An-26 "Vita" for the Air Force of Ukraine. Over a longer time, he reminded to be the only one military medical aircraft in Ukraine. Plans of creating mixed air-transport unit air ambulance were not implemented. Successful use of the An-26 "Vita" to evacuate the wounded during repel of Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine helped to intensify work in the field of military medical aircraft.In2015 inmedical version were rebuilt two more An-26. One of them joined the Air Force, and the second - Natinal Service of Emergencies in Ukraine. All three aircrafts are different composition of medical equipment and ability to provide medical care. Their purpose is evacuation of the wounded from the airfield vicinity of the battle area to military medical institutions. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 125-128. What is the nature of sound? What is the nature of volume? William James, in attempting to address these simple questions wrote, “ The voluminousness of the feeling seems to bear very little relation to the size of the ocean that yields it . The ear and eye are comparatively minute organs, yet they give us feelings of great volume” (203-­4, itals. original). This subtle extensivity of sensation finds its peer in the subtle yet significant influence (...) of habituated action upon our lives. This expansive quality of habit­making is what Craig Dongoski's bodies of work enable us to appreciate. Nearly ten years ago Dongoski had a habit of turning on his audio recorder every day at three o'clock for three minutes. No matter what the setting, what the activity, Dongoski recorded the ambient sounds in his environment at that moment. As it happened, one day he was teaching a drawing class and he recorded the sounds of their pencils scratching across their respective surfaces. This was a critical moment for him. Later he would place a contact mic onto a drawing surface and record the sound of his signature. Signatures change over time, they respond to the conditions in which they are performed. Signatures speak volumes about the author, but a practice of attunement is required for the volume to be audible. To hear all that a signature can tell about its author, the listener must tune into the frequency at which this information is being broadcast. Dongoski's drawings and video works draw­out the peculiar artifact that habit makes of living: habits establish a tempo of living and it seems that one's habitus is the signature of habitual living. I sat down with Craig in an attempt to sound­out some of the depths of thought in his practice. What follows is selected from our conversation. Paul Boshears (PB): Clearly your work is dealing with time: from the painstaking action of rendering the drawing to the free­form approach of launching a microphone into a body of water and waiting to see what's recorded. Craig Dongoski (CD): Are we talking about the films or the drawings? PB: Well, it's a bit of both in my mind. I know the drawings on first glance seem to be these flows of lines without concern but I realize that there is this painstaking action involved. CD: I'm interested in time because I'm interested in forms outside of control, outside of politics, and outside of economics. I think that art, when it's alive, does go beyond those. I'm interested in duality and paradox—a stream of contradiction, I suppose. For instance, scale and size. There is a tendency to think that these are the same thing. But really you can have something small that has a lot of scale—look at Goya's drawings, Los Caprichos , they're very small but they have a lot of scale. Likewise things that are spontaneous don't necessarily mean that they take only two or three seconds to do. This latter distinction is what I'm most interested in. Having that appearance of spontaneity. The image has rhythm, you can latch onto it; but the reality is that it took many hours—and many months in some cases—to arrive at. And this is in keeping with geological time. I like to insert this series of thoughts into my work sometimes as an attempt to make some of this stuff comprehensible. There are all these distractions inundating us throughout our days now. Time gets tweaked by all these technologies that we interact with daily. There's more than just digital time or the mechanical time of your watch. There's biological time, that time in which you're growing. PB: I'm reminded of McLuhan here: he made his career by making that strong claim that the humans of today are not the same humans of three generations ago because technology has fundamentally changed us. Are we not the same human beings as a hundred years ago? CD: I mean, I don't think we're the same human beings that we were when he was around! It's my understanding that before painting a flower, monks would meditate for hours on that flower and then they would complete the painting of that flower in less than a minute. That's what I want to point out about our world today, we have all this information, but how much of it are we metabolizing? PB: Is there a message you're looking for? Or that you're trying to share? CD: These drawings set­up the circumstances for me to continue them forever. I'm only about six years into it, but with more time, things can unfold. You know? If you take this cup of coffee and vow to restrict your work to only this material and medium for seven years—you'll make interesting work. The problem is that most people can't hold on to things or they give up or they get distracted. They don't trust that anything is possible; anything is potential material. Staying with this cup of coffee example, we can get enveloped in the history of the recycling logo, or the process for harvesting coffee and so on. The same is true for my work as it has lead me into places like graphical music scores. I had, of course, known about John Cage's notations and I'd always been interested in sound itself, but this drawing practice made it feasible to explore the intersections in a meaningful way. I think that if you trust your instincts and your curiosities and your abilities, then the bus drives itself. Look at Roman Opalka, he's kind of the patron saint of time painting. The claim is that no one can count to a billion in a lifetime so he's set­out to paint to seven sevens (7,777,777). He began with white numbers on a black field but over the years he has gradually reduced the black field to ever­lightening grays. His plan is to paint these seven sevens on what ostensibly will be white on white. PB: It occurs to me that I've never thought of the actual, literal, meaning of “microphone” in relation to “microscope.” The mic has made everything loud, the world's not allowed to be quiet anymore. Maybe we should call them “macrophones” since telephone's already taken... CD: Well, a microscope is a lens. What got me interested in sound was that a microphone acts like a lens. There are wide angle lenses, or a lens that gets your eye up close to something far away, or at a tiny level. The same is true of the microphone. You can use a parabolic mic to hear what the coach is saying on a sports field or a mic that picks­up the sound from the entire cathedral. There's this whole gamut... I'm kind of playing with the words here. I'm into the minuteness of the sound, but I'm interested in the minuteness of the mark itself. PB: I guess it's a Deluezean, generative, statement, then? It's not a metaphor, it's an actual thing with which we can work. CD : That's right. PB: While doing some background work on you I found myself at interesting places on the internet. For example, Konstantin Raudive and a brief jog into Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP); perhaps this was just synchronicity. But, it's a happy coincidence nonetheless because the them of this issue of continent. is “the moraine” and one of the nuances of this term is “what remains.” Is there a metaphysical or epistemological problem that you're sorting­out here? CD: Think about fossils: fossils are the first recording device, you know? It's the first, natural, recording device. It's in this way that I think my works are fossilized time. Artifacts of that process. Van Gogh is a strong source for me in this regard: it's not what he's painting it's how. You're seeing his nervous system at work. The what is so incidental, the chairs, the flowers, etc. It's funny: when I first started doing this, before I started drawing voices, I was doing these things in cemeteries. I was doing automatic drawings. And when I took this experiment to its maximum I was taking hydrophones and burying them in abandoned graves. I was thinking about the mic rig as the south coordinate and I'd use a shortwave radio as the north coordinate. Usually it was just white noise, but on the east and west I'd station a writer and a drawer. So I'd have these things going on simultaneously and I'd be mixing them at the same time. PB: How'd it come out? CD: Well, just like you'd expect. It was a lot of white noise. But I think that Raudive was on to something. Burroughs used to say something similar when he'd talk about being in a foreign country where he didn't know the language and then he'd start to hear things. At the base, what I'm doing is pattern recognition. I do have a writing component to the drawings. I haven't exploited it in a while but... I use a vocoder, which was developed to encrypt spy signals during one of the World Wars. The mechanism takes two channels, one being the spy's signal combined with noise and then the other channel is a sine wave so that the intended recipient can pick out the words. So I did something like this with Beowulf. I tried combining the spoken word with other television and radio sources, but that didn't work because a book on tape is usually read in a very steady clip and the result was too garbled. So the second try, instead of drawing I was writing, trying to articulate the sounds that I could hear in this garbled transmission of Beowulf. You start to think you hear something, so you start to write what you think you're hearing. But what you're hearing is just being triggered by this articulating action. When the sound of the drawing lines up with the sound of the word you get something. But it's not ever what you're really hearing. You start writing and you're trying to keep up with what you think you're hearing and it is truly, in the most true sense of the phrase, automatic writing. You can contrive and go into a “spirit trance” or whatever, but... PB: It's uninteresting to you? CD: Well, it's unbelievable. It's just listening to sounds and following along. The magic is out there, there are no tricks or anything. You do this exercise with twenty people and you will get twenty totally different writings. But, you're creating the sound and you're creating the writing as an interpretation. That's the thing with EVP, it's homophonic translation. PB: Do you trust a straight line? I know you start with these meticulous lines at the beginning of the drawings but they do change over time. CD: I'm trying to show that there are these imperfections in structures and that over the reiterations of these structures these imperfections become amplified. But you can see them in tree formation as well. The rings alter their shape as the trees grow. PB: Is that your transmission then? You're not just receiving these sounds but you're broadcasting this message as well? CD: Things exist because of their opposites. These drawings are really about nothing. It's the first body of work I've had where people project so much of stuff onto the works. So there you go, things existing because of their opposites. It's kind of like with Mike Kelley: the work was about a critique of commodity culture and commodifying emotions. Using toys this was a critique of production. But then suddenly people were saying it was about abuse and the abuse that Mike Kelley had suffered. And it wasn't but he heard that and said, “I'll go with it,” and so he did. I think that's the nature of communication: I send this but you receive that instead and this makes me think about what I sent in a different way. (shrink)

Some preliminary comments Introduction: The EDWs perspective in my article from 2005 and my book from 2008 -/- I. PHYSICS, COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY (‘REBORN DINOSAURS’ ) • (2016) Did Sean Carroll’s ideas (California Institute of Technology, USA) (within the wrong framework, the “universe”) plagiarize my ideas (2002-2010) (within the EDWs framework) on quantum mechanics, the relationship between Einstein relativity and quantum mechanics, life, the mind-brain problem, etc.? • (2016) The unbelievable similarities between Frank Wilczek’s ideas (Nobel Prize in Physics) and (...) my ideas (2002-2008, etc.) (Philosophy of Mind and Quantum Mechanics) • (2017-2019 NEW) Strong similarity between Carlo Rovelli’s ideas (Italy) in three books (2015, 2017) to my ideas (2002-2008) + commentary February 2018! • (2016) Kastner + (2017) R. E. Kastner, Stuart Kauffman, Michael Epperson “Taking Heisenberg’s Potentia Seriously”: Quite similar ideas to my ideas (2008) + • (2017) A trick: Unbelievable similarities between Lee Smolin’s ideas (2017) and my ideas (2002-2008) • (May 2018) ‘Thus spoke Zarathustra!’ - A fairy-tale with Eugen Ionesco and the Idiot about Nothingness -/- II. PHYSICS • (2011) The unbelievable similarities between Radu Ionicioiu (Physics, University of Bucharest, Romania) and Daniel R. Terno’s ideas (Physics, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia) and my ideas (Quantum Mechanics) • (2013) Côté B. Gilbert (Oontario, Canada) Unbelievalbe similarities • (2015) The strong similarity between Pikovski Igor, Zych Magdalena, Costa Fabio, and Brukner Časlav’s ideas and my ideas (2006-2008) regarding the Schrodinger’s cat’s interactions with its environment (the gravitation of Earth) (both entities being macro-objects) (Quantum Mechanics) • (2015) The strong similarity between Elisabetta Caffau’s ideas (Center for Astronomy at the University of Heidelberg and the Paris Observatory) and my ideas (2011, 2014) regarding the appearance of Big Bang in many places (Cosmology) • (2015) Did Wolfram Schommers (University of Texas at Arlington, USA & Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany) plagiarize my ideas? (Physics) • (2015) Some astrophysicists about "Dark Matter May be 'Another Dimension' - Or Even a Major Galactic Transport System" January 22, 2015 • (2016) The strong similarities between Dylan H. Mahler, Lee Rozema, Kent Fisher, Lydia Vermeyden, Kevin J. Resch, Howard M. Wiseman, and Aephraim Steinberg’s ideas (USA) and my ideas (Quantum Mechanics) • (2016) The unbelievable similarities between Bill Poirier’s ‘Many Interacting Worlds’ and my EDWs (Quantum Mechanics) • (2016 or 2017) Similarities between Adam Frank’s ideas (University of Rochester in New York , USA) (“Minding matter - The closer you look, the more the materialist position in physics appears to rest on shaky metaphysical ground”) and my ideas (2005, 2008) • (2017, 2017) Did Sebastian de Haro (HPS, Cambridge, UK) plagiarize my ideas (2002-2008) • (2017) Unbelievable similarities between Laura Condiotto’s ideas and my ideas (2002-2008) • (2016) The unbelievable similarities between Hugo F. Alrøe and Egon Noe’s (Department of Agroecology, Aarhus University, Denmark) ideas (USA) and my ideas (2002-2008) (Bohr's complementarity extended to ontology) • (2017) The unbelievable similar ideas between Federico Zalamea’s ideas and my ideas • (2018) Unbelievable similarities between Peter J. Lewis’s ideas (2018) and my ideas (2002-2008) • (2018) Timothy Hollowood, ‘Classical from Quantum’, [arXiv:1803.04700v1 [quant-ph] 13 March 2018] • (2018) Mario Hubert and Davide Romano, ‘The Wave-Function as a Multi-Field’ -/- III. COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND • (2011-2014) Did Georg Northoff (Psychoanalysis, Institute of Mental Health) plagiarize my ideas (2002-2008)? • (2011) The unbelievable similarities between Kalina Diego Cosmelli, Legrand Dorothée and Thompson Evan’s ideas (USA) and my ideas (Cognitive Neuroscience) • (2015) Did David Ludwig (Philosophy, University of Amsterdam) plagiarize many of my ideas? (Philosophy (of Mind) • (2016) Did Neil D. Theise (Department of Pathology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA) and Kafatos C. Menas (Department of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA) plagiarize my ideas of Physics and Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy (the mind-brain problem, quantum mechanics, etc.) from 2002-2008? • Did David Bourget (2018) (Director, Centre for Digital Philosophy, Western University (or University of Western Ontario) plagiarize my ideas regarding the mind-brain problem? + Chalmers • (2016) Unbelievable similarities between Dan Siegel’s ideas (Mindsight Institute, USA) and my ideas (2002-2008) -/- IV. Philosophy (of science) • (2010) The unbelievable similarities between Alexey Alyushin (Moscow, Russia) and my ideas (on Ontology) • (2013 + 2017) Did Markus Gabriel (Bonn University) plagiarize my ideas? • (2013) The unbelievable similarities between Andrew Newman’s ideas (University of Nebraska, at Omaha, USA) and my ideas (Ontology) • (2016) Did Tahko E. Tuomas (University of Helsinki, Finland) plagiarize my ideas? + Tahko E. Tuomas (‘The Epistemology of Essence’) • (2017) Did Jani Hakkarainen (University of Tampere, Finland) plagiarize my ideas (2002-2008)? + (2017) Markku Keinänen, Antti Keskinen & Jani Hakkarainen • (2017) The unbelievable similarities between Dean Rickles’s ideas (HPS, Univ. of Sydney) and my ideas (2002-2008) • (2017) Did Dirk K. F. Meijer and Hans J. H. Geesink (University of Groningen, Netherlands) plagiarize my ideas (2002-2008)? (2017) • (2018) Unbelievable similar ideas between Jason Winning’s ideas (2018) and my ideas (2002-2008) • (2018) David Mark Kovacs (Lecturer of philosophy at Tel Aviv University), ‘The Deflationary Theory of Ontological Dependence’, Philosophical Quarterly (forthcoming) -/- Conclusion [Obviously, there are other “specialists” that published UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas but I have not discovered them yet…] Bibliography [Some people haven't read my works but they claim my ideas can be found in other works. Soon, they will discover EDWs in Shakespeare, Bach, Sophocles and ET's letter sent 10 million years ago... me vs. people who have plagiarized my ideas: on Youtube] ------------------------------------------------------------------ July 2018 -/- • Oreste M. Fiocco • Baptiste Le Bihan (University of Geneva, forthcoming) • Antonella Mallozzi (The Graduate Center – CUNY, forthcoming in Synthese, penultimate draft) • Erik C. Banks (Wright State University, 2014) • Sami Pihlström (2009) • Katherin Koslicki’s ideas (2008) The Structure of Objects, Oxford University Press) and my ideas (2002-2005-2006) -/- November 2018 • Maurizio Ferraris (2014/2012) Manifesto of New Realism -/- • Graham Harman (2017) : Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (Penguin Books) ---------------------------------------------------------------- -/- January 2019 • Philip Ball (2018): “Why everything you thought you knew about quantum physics is different” • Gerhard Grössing “Vacuum landscaping: cause of nonlocal influences without signaling” • Anne Sophie Meincke (November 2018) The Disappearance of Change (IJPS) 28. The Disappearance of Change Towards a Process Account of Persistence Forthcoming in: International Journal of Philosophical Studies DOI: 10.1080/09672559.2018.1548634 • Baptiste Le Bihana (University of Geneva) and James Read (Oxford Univ.) “Duality and Ontology” (forthcoming, in Philosophy Compass) • Baptiste Le Bihan (University of Geneva): “Space Emergence in Contemporary Physics: Why We Do Not Need Fundamentality, Layers of Reality and Emergence” in Disputatio, Vol. X, No. 49, November 2018 • Alexander Alexandrovich Antonov (2016) (Research Center of Information Technologies “TELAN Electronics”, Kiev, Ukraine): “Hypothesis of the Hidden Multiverse Explains Dark Matter and Dark Energy”, Journal of Modern Physics, 2016, 7, 1228-1246 -/- February 2019 • James Barham (2019): “The Reality of Purpose and the Reform of Naturalism” • Giorgio Lando (2017) Mereology - A Philosophical Introduction, Bloomsbury Academic • (2018) Albrecht von M¨uller • Elias Zafiris, Concept and Formalization of Constellatory Self-Unfolding - A Novel Perspective on the Relation between Quantum and Relativistic Physics • (2019) Flaminia Giacomini, Esteban Castro-Ruiz, & Časlav Brukner “Quantum mechanics and the covariance of physical laws in quantum reference frames”, Nature Communications • (2019) Valia Allori, “Scientific Realism without the Wave-Function: An Example of Naturalized Quantum Metaphysics” (to appear in J. Saatsi, S. French (eds.) “Scientific Realism and the Quantum” OUP (2019) - Department of Philosophy Northern Illinois University) • (2018) Paulo De Jesus “Thinking through enactive agency: sense-making, bio-semiosis and the ontologies of organismic worlds”, Phenom Cogn Sci • (2016) TIMOTHY MORTON, For a Logic of Future Coexistence, (Columbia University Press) • (2017) Andrew Cooper, Two directions for teleology: naturalism and idealism, Synthese . (shrink)

The vast majority of contributions to the literature on spirituality in nursing make extravagant claims about transcendence, eternity, the numinous, higher powers, higher levels of existence, invisible forces, cosmic unity, the essence of humanity, or other supernatural concepts. Typically, these assertions are made without the support of argument or evidence; and, as a consequence, alternative ways of theorizing ‘spirituality’ have been closed off, while the lack of consistent scholarship has turned the topic into a metaphysical backwater. In this paper, I (...) adopt a different premise, rejecting unsupported claims, and surveying the ‘spirituality’ terrain from a naturalistic and reductionist perspective. I argue that, if we rid ourselves of non‐naturalistic assumptions, we will discover theoretical and clinical resources in health psychology, social psychology, neuropsychology, and pharmacopsychology – resources which confirm that it is possible to conceptualize the study of existential concerns, and how health professionals might respond to them, in a properly scientific manner. In order to illustrate the potential usefulness of these resources, I will take palliative care as an example. (shrink)

This paper examines the complexity and fluidity of maternal identity through an examination of narratives about "real motherhood" found in children's literature. Focusing on the multiplicity of mothers in adoption, I question standard views of maternity in which gestational, genetic and social mothering all coincide in a single person. The shortcomings of traditional notions of motherhood are overcome by developing a fluid and inclusive conception of maternal reality as authored by a child's own perceptions.

According to the standard analysis of degree questions, the logical form of a degree question contains a variable that ranges over individual degrees and is bound by the degree question operator how. In contrast with this, we claim that the variable bound by the degree question operator how does not range over individual degrees but over intervals of degrees, by analogy with Schwarzschild and Wilkinson's proposal regarding the semantics of comparative clauses. Not only does the interval-based semantics predict the existence (...) of certain readings that are not predicted under the standard view, it is also able, together with other natural assumptions, to account for the sensitivity of degree questions to negative islands, as well as for the fact, uncovered by Fox and Hackl, that negative islands can be obviated by some properly placed modals. Like Fox and Hackl, we characterize negative island effects as arising from the fact that the relevant question, due to its meaning alone, can never have a maximally informative answer. Contrary to Fox and Hackl, however, we do not need to assume that scales are universally dense, nor that the notion of maximal informativity responsible for negative islands is blind to contextual parameters. (shrink)

We motivate and introduce a new method of abduction, Matrix Abduction, and apply it to modelling the use of non-deductive inferences in the Talmud such as Analogy and the rule of Argumentum A Fortiori. Given a matrix $${\mathbb {A}}$$ with entries in {0, 1}, we allow for one or more blank squares in the matrix, say a i,j =?. The method allows us to decide whether to declare a i,j = 0 or a i,j = 1 or a i,j =? (...) undecided. This algorithmic method is then applied to modelling several legal and practical reasoning situations including the Talmudic rule of Kal-Vachomer. We add an Appendix showing that this new rule of Matrix Abduction, arising from the Talmud, can also be applied to the analysis of paradoxes in voting and judgement aggregation. In fact we have here a general method for executing non-deductive inferences. (shrink)

...If, in some places, backward science determines the remaining period by the lack of optimism only by the number 123456789, then our progressive science expands it to 987654321, which is eight times more advanced than theirs. However, due to the inherent caution of scientists, both sides do not specify the measuring unit of reference — year, day, hour or minute are meant. Leonid Leonov. Collected Op. in ten volumes. Volume ten. M.: IHL, 1984, p.583. -/- The modern men being as (...) a rule is proceeding in three relatively autonomous, but immanently coexisting, and each penetrating dialectically through other, and each contesting even cruelly with other, and each more or less dominating on other, differently in various societies, worlds: the first one of the barbarity, the second one the culture, the third one the civilization... Barbarity is the mode of coexistence of autonomous human societies based on the unlimited will to act so as subject wants to do without any limitations of his activities... Culture is the mode of coexistence of autonomous human societies based on the most ancient testaments, customs, traditions etc of the highestly sacrified appearence... Civilisation is the mode of coexistence of autonomous human societies based on the reasoned or legitimated by social contracts, by profits, by expediency and so more constitutions, institutions etc... -/- Andrei Melnikov-Pechersky in his epic "In the Woods" says that there was a movement among the Old Believers in Russia, or a current that proclaimed Kostroma the new and, it seems, the only true Jerusalem, in an apocalyptic sense, of course, which in its spiritual scale was probably not inferior to the Bogomils, shakers, Mormons, or else and the whole Reformation in potential. In Western Europe, every more or less convex nuance of the history of a state or region (even if it is a small San Marino) is overgrown with almost a dozen institutions, not always state ones, by the way, in which almost every sneeze and step of very ambivalent historical subjects in a broad sense is studied. Especially in the young, but very pretentious America of the United States, which embodies all world justice. In our country, for example, even many leading humanitarian specialists do not realize the spiritual value of the Ipatievsky MONASTERY. The Russian writer Boris Shiryaev, who died quite a long time ago and in a very far abroad, devoted a special part of his documentary and artistic epic of wanderings "The Inextinguishable Lampada" to an entertaining and instructive, tragic fate of a kind of village monarchy in some Villages of the Kostroma province (I could not identify the area, and, frankly, I did not really try) in the early years The Soviet government. At the same time, all Russians learn about the French emperor Napoleon almost with their mother's milk how many percent of cyanide potassium was found in his hair, they reflect on Lermontov's "Airship" (probably, just not to "memorize" the imposed "Borodino" by heart). The events, of course, are incomparable, but the fact is significant. The outstanding national artist (if not to say a thinker of the Chesnyakov level) Grigory Pavlovich Kusochkin was glorified wherever, in whatever catalogues he was not included. Paris, London, New York, St. Petersburg, Moscow... To look at some smear of luminaries like Picasso or Modigliani, international tourist routes are organized in the restaurant toilet using the finest marketing technologies, and we did not even know Grigory Pavlovich by sight until, thank God, a series of TV shows on all Russian channels was dedicated to him in one gulp. Why is this happening? Is it a consequence of poverty or the result of the conscious policy of the ruling elite of the country and the world? The regions of the Kostroma Region are Austria, Switzerland, Bavaria, Armenia, Moldova, and Georgia... Georgia! I served in the army there. In this small but very great country, judging even by the appearance of its President Shevardnadze, although it is smaller than the Kostroma region, there are so many different, but Georgian-speaking peoples! Kakhetians, Meskhetians, Imereti, Iveretians, Mingrelians, Khevsurs... Adjarians (mostly Georgian-speaking Muslims) even have their own autonomy. And some peoples are not Georgian—speaking at all — South Ossetians, Abkhazians, Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, even Assyrians. In the Kostroma Region, and in any Russian "province" — not much less: there are plenty of the same Georgians or Armenians everywhere, quite moderate, loyal, and so on. Having, as a rule, their own officially registered associations within the framework of cultural autonomy. Well done! And Israel! He is the only one with all his "illegal" (and I am for the fact that every nation knows better where its ancestral lands are) territories half the size of the Kostroma region. The total number of Jews worldwide, according to the "Soviet Encyclopedic Dictionary" in 1987, is about 14 million. Meanwhile, the fate of Israel is being preoccupied (it is very instructive how he achieved this!) all the united nations of the world. In the Kostroma Region and its diaspora, it seems to everyone, and especially to its semi-migrant, Varangian leadership. I don't care if they build a public atomic bomb here in the form of a nuclear power plant or not. Because they do not know the value of this land, the greatness of its spirit. Kostroma is a holy land. I will immediately make a reservation that by Kostroma I mean not only the modern region, but the entire area that has ever historically been associated with Kostroma. The USSR is also a part of the great historical Russia. In this sense, even the entire era of the Russian Romanov Empire is the Kostroma region. Or: many toponymic objects of our native land are called mysteriously beautiful: Sharya, Shunga, Shekshema, Sholezhka, - we need to find out what kind of peoples — and where are they now? — we left such euphonious archetypal combinations, because these are our Kostromsky peoples, these are our Kostroma people. Or, say, the classic of American and world sociology Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin writes in his autobiographical scientific novel "The Long Way" that he studied at the Khrenovskaya (what a strong word!) teachers' seminary of Kostroma province, but in an administrative row for propaganda activities, gendarmes were taken by sledge to the prison of the city of Kineshma - is this not a fact for Kostroma, and primarily for him, local history, although Kineshma has long been attributed to the Ivanovo region, and Pitirim Alexandrovich is buried on the other side of the planet?! I have not the slightest doubt that Kostroma provided spiritual food, gave birth to and nurtured a huge intellectual diaspora with extremely valuable material on a national, global scale. And this is both in direct and indirect order, in the form of a chain reaction. Apparently, it is easy for an intelligent person to grow up in Kostroma, but it is impossible to live, and somewhere on the contrary. Therefore, it is not surprising that the geneticist academician D. K. Belyaev, who was born in the village of Protasov near Nerekhta, very close to Kostroma, glorified Moscow and Siberia with his discoveries and practical results, which immeasurably enriched the Soviet state treasury with foreign exchange income from the sale of the most valuable fur grown according to the biotechnology developed by him in a much shorter time than it usually turns out in nature. And in Kostroma, most likely, few people know who he is and what he is famous for. I will focus in more detail on one of the aspects of his great life. This happened back in the so-called pre-Perestroika times. In a series of his speeches, Dmitry Konstantinovich, based on the results of his and colleagues' research, emphasized, in his opinion, the determining role of the biological factor in shaping the content of human essence, of course, only in a philosophical, conceptual aspect. For some reason, this was opposed by a geneticist, as they say, persecuted at one time by the "senile" in selectionism (including human nature) by the Michurino-Lysenkoists, academician N. P. Dubinin, which personally remains incomprehensible to me until now. With a grateful curtsey to Academician Dubinin and his point of view, the famous French humanist, member of the Politburo of the French Communist Party Lucien Sav appeared on the pages of the Communist magazine. The material was clearly titled: "Problems are not only scientific, but also political." He very indecently attributed the views of academician Belyaev to "a reactionary ideology that tries to put genetics at its service, and more broadly, biology, in order to present all kinds of social inequalities of all kinds as inherent in nature itself"(1). I would like to see any ideology that does not try to "put this or that at its service," much less something worthwhile... A little later, the editorial of the Communist hit the "biologizers", and soon Dmitry Konstantinovich was gone. In short, it is only on the example of our fellow countrymen that you can write interesting, world-class essays on science and its history, but instead our scientists should fit their global potencies into a page and a half (good yet. if not entirely at their own expense), and then for at least three years to guess whether they will be published or not. Now it no longer surprises me how at one time, when, after reading the listener card I filled out, the sweetest girl from the IPKPON office at USU congratulated me for something. It turned out that the dean of the Faculty of Philosophy of USU, doctor, professor, Honored Scientist, and now academician Konstantin Niko-laevich Lyubutin is a countryman, Kostromsky, or rather Manturovsky by origin, as I write below in the notes — we are Kostromendors. To him, my fellow citizen in the most subtle micropatriotic dimensions, I owe a lot in my professional and social development, even in survival. Because that's how it often turns out: you can be born here, sometimes you can live here... It's very hard. Maybe the Kostroma origin of an outstanding Russian historian of philosophy, organizer of science and education, educator and friend of a galaxy of people devoted to the Motherland and the cause is not a great milestone in the history of the region, but name me at least a dozen Russian cities on the scale of Kostroma, from where such intellectual ones would come out into the world and light luminaries like ours. No matter who you take from the world significance of the pillars of national (and world, and foreign, - even the great Rabbi of Lubavitcher spent three years in exile in a Campfire, — I learned from some foreign voices) history, literature, culture in general, technology, science and so on - you will always find someone, which is very directly related to Kostroma. Pushkin, Lermontov, Gorky. Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky, Pisarev, Uspensky, Katenin, Florensky, Savrasov, Kustodiev, Dyagilev, Mikhalkov, Alexander Alexandrovich Zinoviev; writers, artists, entrepreneurs, revolutionaries, inventors, politicians... In some world-famous for its classic Russian provincialism, Kologriv has been storing, figuratively speaking, unique sketches, if not of Leo-Nardo da Vinci himself, then certainly of his school, almost since the seventeenth century. And not only that. Nevertheless, the well-known Chukhloma to the Fatherland, in addition to thinkers of the rank of Rozanov and Zinoviev (where should domestic philosophers mature and not be born, if not in Chukhloma, Manturov or Khrenknowswhere?), gave an actor of amazing, national, originality — Mikhail Pugovkin, who can not be confused with anyone, a role that no one will repeat. (shrink)

Religions; Islam; relations; Christianity; Judaism; Christianity and other religions; Other (Philosophy); religious aspects; Islam.

The article presents the conceptualization of philosophical education, in the context of which the evolution of the development of society from informational to smart society takes place. The purpose of the article is to reveal the conceptualization of philosophical education in the context of the idea of a smart society and to show that philosophical education does not stand still but develops along with the development of science and technology, which requires the development of a conceptual and categorical apparatus. Research (...) objectives: to show the development of philosophical knowledge, in the context of which new innovative ideas are ripening; to reveal that the concept of a smart society is based on the expectation or belief in the ability of modern smart technologies to positively influence social processes and lead to a new qualitative state of all social life, which is called a smart society; to prove that much in solving all these problems depends on the state of education, including philosophical and ideological, not only developing our cognitive abilities, but also forming a responsible and demanding attitude to goal setting, the choice of basic life values. Analysis of recent research and publications, which presents a solution to this problem. We rely on the works of I.Ardashkin, V.Voronkova, M.Kastels, O.Kivlyuk, K.Korsak, A.Lazarevich, R.Oleksenko, O.Punchenko, which in one way or another reflected the problem of the formation of a smart society. The research methodology is the dialectical, historical, systemic, informational methods, which allowed to penetrate deeply into the evolution of philosophical knowledge that is not in mass, but develops with the development of science, technique and technology. The result of research - based smart society the development of information and computer technologies that lead to breakthrough technologies and innovative development It is noted that the proposed reorganization of the system of social-humanitarian education in the universities of the Republic of Belarus intended to raise to the level of philosophical training of domestic specialists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Mystery of Problems for Modern Theological MethodologyBruno M. Shah O.P.Recent trends in Catholic theology emphasize the category of "mystery." But "problems," which can seem distinct from and even opposed to mysteries, have a constitutive role in the work of theology as well. If the object of faith is God, and if theology's goal is typically defined as "faith seeking understanding," then the object of theology must include the (...) seeking's problematical quotient. At the very least, problems condition the faith-and-reason labor of theological enquiry. This essay claims that problems philosophically orient and index the theological articulation of mysteries—not the mysteries themselves—particularly in a modern key, and that they require explicit attention in theological methodology and pedagogy.First, I explain my concern with the "return to mystery" in conciliar-era Catholic theology. This explanation entails, second, describing the special attention to "problems" in neo-Kantianism, which bequeaths the tension between the empirical world and transcendental freedom to modern theology. These two historiographical matters in methodology set up the tension between problems and mysteries for Catholic thinking. Third, I briefly return to Aristotle's thoughts on the matter, which are a lodestone for the tradition. Fourth, I evaluate the positions of Jacques Maritain and Gabriel Marcel, the most important conciliar-era thinkers who thematized the relationship between problems and mysteries. My treatment will show how both ontological (Maritain) and existential (Marcel) dynamics of mystery are necessarily linked to metaphysical and spiritual problems. The [End Page 1265] critical ascertaining of theological mystery formally requires orientation via philosophical problems.My concern here is fundamental, ecclesial, and professional, interested that those who serve the Church through theological writing and teaching do so in a recognizably common or compatible manner, and in a way that can meaningfully stimulate theological interest. If the teaching of theology would invite students to embark upon the via inventionis and not merely yield to the via doctrinae, there must be fundamental advertence to ontological and existential problems as the theologically constitutive point of departure.1 Theologians do well to think in correlative terms of problems and mysteries. As a fifth and final point, then, I suggest that the quintessential starting point for (fundamental) theology today is the problem and mystery of the human person.Historical Context 1: The Return to MysteryContemporary Church life and theology have witnessed a "return to mystery."2 "Mystery" refers to some range or dynamic of reality that is essentially inaccessible apart from some feature of religious or spiritual practice. Christian reference to "mystery" or "mysteries" etymologically intimates that there are realities of which we cannot and/or ought not to speak, even as these mysteries have in some way been disclosed.3 Mysteries, therefore, are tensional in that they indicate at once contact and transcendence, knowledge and nescience. Christians and others communicate in religious mysteries through liturgical exercise and creedal confession, as well as through personal prayer and even existential trial. They are mediations of what is categorically transcendent, of what constitutively eludes or escapes [End Page 1266] the categories of our objectifying consciousness. Accordingly, the mysterious regards the inarticulable.That the substance of religious mysteries is real or true cannot be proven beyond all question, not according to commonly accessible human criteria of justification. For Christians, the gift of faith provides the convincing motive to believe in the reality of Christian mysteries through a kind of thinking with felt decision. Granting this claim, the work of theology is to reflect upon the mysteries of faith and develop expressible knowledge. Theology articulates (the) faith, extrapolating upon the reasons that the heart has for its belief. To do this work, theology trades upon fixed standards of confessional speech, liturgical practice, and perhaps also moral action, which provide lexical cogency and communicable intelligibility.The late nineteenth century witnessed attacks upon theology's claims to objectively or universally valid expression, owing especially to challenges from both epistemology and historiography.4 The surge of post-Enlightenment liberalism was surely catalytic as well. The Catholic Church initially aggregated these attacks in terms of "modernism." But then—as the standard history continues—conciliar theology gave fresh and viable riposte to what was... (shrink)

Mishel Fuco not only influenced the consciousness of modern West, but changed the modus of thinking, the way of perception of many traditional notions, transformed the opinions about the reality, history, person. Philosopher’s principle research programme which attaches the entirety to his works is “archeology of knowledge” programme, the search of human knowledge’s original layers. Let us mark that all Fuco’s works in 1960s are devoted to main aim: to clear up the conditions of historical origin of different mental aims (...) and social institutions in the culture of the Modern Time. Though in the whole this common aim remained for Fuco invariable, but the level on which he realizes his research search is changing constantly and rather logically. Relations of power, and to be more exact,accumulations of power and knowledge, social and cognitive which define all the aggregate of specific possibilities of culture in each given historical period. More than that the philosopher offers the particular prospects of sight of modern society and precisely totality of power relations, its ubiquitous nature and specific productivity which produces itself in each moment in any point or rather in any attitude from one point to another. From Fuco’s point of view the power is everywhere and not because it involves everything but because it comes from everywhere. The power is productive in that degree in which it is not associated with one definite imperious instance but pierces all kinds of activity in society, putting on its indelible stamp, developing under definite angle and due to this factit causes products, produced by them. The power induces and at the same time determines the fact which appears as a result of its inducement. The thirst of supremacy, which surrounds the individual and is focused on it as on the center of its use of force, comes out as a defining sign. It should be noticed that Fuco’s conception of power is not reduced to the understanding it as anonymous impersonal net of relations, piercing all society. It is supplemented by power treatment,coming out in “designed” look of definite imperious structure or imperious institute. (shrink)

This study introduces and evaluates the GIBAC Learning Model, aimed at enhancing students’ mathematical communication skills in Indonesian secondary schools, achieving an impressive 30% increase in students’ mathematical communication skills as evidenced by the n-gain method and dependent t-test analysis. Grounded in cooperative learning theory and motivation, the model integrates local academic culture and promotes student independence, offering a promising avenue for educational advancement in Indonesia. Employing a Mixed Methods approach, data from three secondary schools were collected via cluster random (...) sampling, encompassing interviews, observations, expert assessments, and questionnaires. Analysis reveals the model’s effectiveness in improving mathematical communication skills, underscoring its relevance to Indonesian educational practices. Practical implications for teachers emphasize the integration of cultural aspects and student autonomy in mathematics education, thereby contributing to the advancement of educational literature through Indonesian innovation and cultural adaptation in pedagogical frameworks. (shrink)

Probability theory is important because of its relevance for decision making, which also means: its relevance for the single case. The propensity theory of objective probability, which addresses the single case, is subject to two problems: Humphreys’ problem of inverse probabilities and the problem of the reference class. The paper solves both problems by restating the propensity theory using (an objectivist version of) Pearl’s approach to causality and probability, and by applying a decision-theoretic perspective. Contrary to a widely held view, (...) decision making on the basis of given propensities can proceed without a subjective-probability supplement to propensities. (shrink)