Some philosophers have become atheists because of “intellectual probity.” Martin Buber relates two occasions during which he advocated his view of the term “God” and rejected alternative perspectives. He never justified the basis for either his advocacy or his rejection, yet both play an important role in all his writing, especially his specific type of Zionism. Using what has been called the mere theism of William James’ “The Will to Believe” and the criteria for faith that James advances in that (...) essay illuminates both Buber’s general view of the divine and more particularly his Zionism. Once Buber, no less than James, is understood as a mere theist the basis of what he accepts and what he rejects as true religion becomes clearer. Buber’s theism meets James’ requirement of being a live, forced, momentous option and his Zionism also strives to meet those standards. (shrink)

If national education is, as Ilan Gur-Ze’ev thinks, inevitably a matter of agents for and victims of a national system, only a “counter-education” can correct it. Martin Buber shared many of Gur-Ze’ev’s concerns, but advocated a more positive view of national education. This essay examines Buber’s development of his pedagogical theory in its context, notes his influence on several educational models, investigates how his view of national education either continues or is ignored in the modern State of Israel, and shows (...) that his positive view draws not only on his “I-Thou” dialogical insight but also on his advocacy of a myth of Zion, a myth that provides an alternative not just to the dominant myths in Israel today but also to Gur-Ze’ev’s counter-education. (shrink)

Creative Betrayal: Hasidism, Israeli Writers, and Martin Buber Contemporary American Jews seem to have a strange attraction to an eighteenth century Jewish ...

The fifth chapter contains entries for works on contemporary Judaism and human rights. The volume concludes with author, title, and subject indexes.

Recent studies have renewed focus on Martin Buber’s “theopolitics” in contrast to “theological politics.” The present study expands this work by looking at what Buber meant by God. His approach to the Bible, informed by his view that “extended, the lines of relationship meet in the Eternal Thou,” illuminates his analysis of the five types of biblical leadership. That analysis, far from separating “religion” and “politics,” seemed to assume what might be designated a civil religion. The social order was integrated (...) with religious concerns. Underneath the socio-religious surface, however, Buber discerned universal principles of relationship. Analyzing each stage in biblical leadership as Buber presented it shows how he extended the lines of historical relationships to reveal an aspect of the Eternal Thou. (shrink)

Hume’s Law that one cannot derive an “ought” from an “is” has often been deemed to bear a significance that extends far beyond logic. Repeatedly, it has been invoked as posing a serious threat to views about normativity: naturalism in metaethics and positivism in jurisprudence. Yet in recent years, a puzzling asymmetry has emerged: while the view that Hume’s Law threatens naturalism has largely been abandoned (due mostly to Pigden’s work, see e.g. Pigden 1989), the thought that Hume’s Law is (...) a serious challenge to positivism has only grown in prominence. Our main aim is to establish that Hume’s Law is not a threat to positivism or naturalism. First, we connect extensive, but unfortunately siloed, discussions of this issue. Second, we show that Hume’s Law is not a serious threat to naturalism or positivism, for the gap between logic and such theses is very hard to bridge in a way that would make Hume’s Law able to bear this significance. Finally, we emphasize an implication of our discussion: it undermines one of the main “dialectical tributaries” in jurisprudence (Toh 2018). (shrink)

In this chapter we explain what experimental philosophy of science is, how it relates to the philosophy of science, and STS more broadly, and what sorts of contributions is can make to ongoing research in the philosophy of science.

Pascal’s wager faces serious criticisms and is generally considered unconvincing. We argue that it can make a comeback powered by an unlikely ally: postmodernism. If one denies the existence of objective facts (e.g. about God or His relation to the world), then various non-theological considerations should come to the fore when considering the rationality of religious commitment and the choice of education for one’s children. In fact, we shall argue that, if one genuinely cares about one’s children, then – in (...) many Western countries – one cannot consistently be both secular and post-modernist. (shrink)

A theoretical structure for multiattribute decision making is presented, based on a dynamical system for interactions in a neural network incorporating affective and rational variables. This enables modeling of problems that elude two prevailing economic decision theories: subjective expected utility theory and prospect theory. The network is unlike some that fit economic data by choosing optimal weights or coefficients within a predetermined mathematical framework. Rather, the framework itself is based on principles used elsewhere to model many other cognitive and behavioral (...) data, in a manner approximating how humans perform behavioral functions. Different, interconnected modules within the network encode (a) attributes of objects among which choices are made, (b) object categories, (c) and goals of the decision maker. An example is utilized to simulate the actual consumer choice between old and new versions of Coca-Cola. Potential applications are also discussed to market decisions involving negotiations between participants, such as international petroleum traders. (shrink)

A single Sanskrit commentary exists for the Caṇḍamahāroṣaṇatantra—the Padmāvatī of Mahāsukhavajra—the only palm-leaf witness of which is preserved in a late thirteenth-century manuscript in Kathmandu. The tantra is relatively late, unmentioned outside Nepal, and the only in-depth study to date examines only the first eight of its twenty five chapters. No study or edition of the Padmāvatī exists. Here we present the first edition and translation of a complete chapter, the sixth paṭala, a section dealing mainly with transgressive sexual practices. (...) Some of the ideas and pragmatic details presented by the author, Mahāsukhavajra, are unique in Vajrayāna literature. (shrink)

This volume gathers together leading philosophers of science and cognitive scientists from around the world to provide one of the first book-length studies of this important and emerging field. Specific topics considered include learning and the nature of scientific knowledge, the cognitive consequences of exposure to explanations, climate change, and mechanistic reasoning and abstraction. Chapters explore how experimental methods can be applied to questions about the nature of science and show how to fruitfully theorize about the nature and role of (...) science with well-grounded empirical research. Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Science presents a new direction in the philosophical exploration of science and paves a path for those who might seek to pursue research in experimental philosophy of science. (shrink)

Background Chronic pain is a pervasive and invisible condition which affects people in a myriad of ways including but not limited to their quality of life, autonomy, mental and physical health, social mobility, and productivity. There are many ethical implications of neuroscience research on chronic pain, given its potential to reduce suffering and improve the lived experience of people in pain. While a growing body of research studies the etiology, neurophysiology, and management of chronic pain, it is unknown to what (...) degree neuroscience research in this area engages with relevant ethics concepts. Aim To explore the presence of ethics concepts in empirical chronic pain neuroscience literature to advance knowledge regarding the ethics of chronic pain management. Methods We conducted a hybrid bibliometric analysis and scoping review of chronic pain neuroscience articles published between 1999 and 2021 to identify the presence of ethics concepts. We selected articles from the top, middle, and bottom 20 neuroscience journals ranked by Impact Factor. We conducted a database search of Web of Science and a hand-search using PubMed, Google Scholar, and the reference lists of included articles. Findings Our database search yielded 2779 results from which 46 articles met inclusion criteria. An additional 13 articles were hand-retrieved using PubMed and Google Scholar in accordance with the inclusion criteria, totaling 59 articles. We identified four main ethics themes in our analysis: 1) Quality of Life (n = 46), 2) Autonomy (n = 5), 3) Transparency (n = 4), and 4) Beneficence and Non-Maleficence (n = 4). Conclusion Most neuroscience papers do not include a discussion of ethics related to chronic pain conditions. Those that do tend to merely state rather than define or contextualize a particular ethics concept. Given the potential ethical implications of neuroscience research for people living with chronic pain, we argue that to maximize its public health benefit, neuroscience researchers should consider the ethical relevance of their work within their scientific publications. This may generate further ethical reflection within the field, to improve pain management. (shrink)

Smiles provide information about a social partner’s affect and intentions during social interaction. Although always encountered within a specific situation, the influence of contextual information on smile evaluation has not been widely investigated. Moreover, little is known about the reciprocal effect of smiles on evaluations of their accompanying situations. In this research, we assessed how different smile types and situational contexts affected participants’ social evaluations. In Study 1, 85 participants rated reward, affiliation, and dominance smiles embedded within either enjoyable, polite, (...) or negative (unpleasant) situations. Context had a strong effect on smile ratings, such that smiles in enjoyable situations were rated as more genuine and joyful, as well as indicating less superiority than those in negative situations. In Study 2, 200 participants evaluated the situations that these smiles were perceived within (rather than the smiles themselves). Although situations paired with reward (vs. affiliation) smiles tended to be rated more positively, this effect was absent for negative situations. Ultimately, the findings point toward a reciprocal relationship between smiles and contexts, whereby the face influences evaluations of the situation and vice versa. (shrink)

The article is a critical notice of Daniel Garber, Leibniz: Body, Substance, Monad. Garber presents a developmental reading of Leibniz's metaphysics that focuses on Leibniz's evolving analysis of body and force as the key to his account of substance. Garber claims that Leibniz shifts from an early theory of body to a theory of corporeal substance in his middle years, and only develops a theory of monads in his later writings—and that even then Leibniz looks not to abandon the (...) scheme of corporeal substances but to reconcile it with that of monads. The present article considers several challenges to Garber's interpretation, questioning, among other things, Garber's claims about development and Garber's account of Leibniz's primary arguments for the theory of monads. The article concludes that while crucial elements of the standard interpretation of Leibniz as an idealist can be defended against Garber's critique, the original traditional view that takes the theory of monads as the first and most fundamental principle of Leibniz's metaphysics is no longer sustainable. (shrink)

The loss or absence of vision is probably one of the most incapacitating events that can befall a human being. The importance of vision for humans is also reflected in brain anatomy as approximately one third of the human brain is devoted to vision. It is therefore unsurprising that throughout history many attempts have been undertaken to develop devices aiming at substituting for a missing visual capacity. In this review, we present two concepts that have been prevalent over the last (...) two decades. The first concept is sensory substitution, which refers to the use of another sensory modality to perform a task that is normally primarily sub-served by the lost sense. The second concept is cross-modal plasticity, which occurs when loss of input in one sensory modality leads to reorganization in brain representation of other sensory modalities. Both phenomena are training-dependent. We also briefly describe the history of blindness from ancient times to modernity, and then proceed to address themeansthat have been used to help blind individuals, with an emphasis on modern technologies, invasive (various type of surgical implants) and non-invasive devices. With the advent of brain imaging, it has become possible to peer into the neural substrates of sensory substitution and highlight the magnitude of the plastic processes that lead to a rewired brain. Finally, we will address the important question of the value and practicality of the available technologies and future directions. (shrink)

ISSUES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE edited by Alfred M. MacKay and Daniel D. Merrill. (Oberlin Colloquium, 1972.) Yale U.P., 1976. xiv+161 pp. £7.50.TRUTH AND MEANING: Essays in Semantics, edited by Gareth Evans and John McDowell. Clarendon Press: O.U.P., 1976. xxiii+420 pp. £11.50.

Artificial intelligence is a current tool that is used in different areas of the human life with the purpose of facilitating and directing the processes in distinct sceneries of society. This research aimed to use AI as an educational resource in teaching and learning process in the area of biology for students at the Adventist School CEA Cambulos in the city of Cali. A qualitative research methodology was used, with data collection techniques such as observation and interviews, presenting an action (...) research approach. The main results were the potential of AI to enhance learning, the disposition of students to learn through it, and the need for training in the educational sector for its inclusive use and achieving responsible and effective results. That is how it is considered the challenge of reflecting the imminent arrival of AI in the student context and being prepared to be part of the transformation that can be generated in pedagogical processes. (shrink)

There is a venerable philosophical tradition that views human beings as intrinsically rational, though even the most ardent defender of this view would admit that under certain circumstances people’s decisions and thought processes can be very irrational indeed. When people are extremely tired, or drunk, or in the grip of rage, they sometimes reason and act in ways that no account of rationality would condone. About thirty years ago, Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman and a number of other psychologists began (...) reporting findings suggesting much deeper problems with the traditional idea that human beings are intrinsically rational animals. What these studies demonstrated is that even under quite ordinary circumstances where fatigue, drugs and strong emotions are not factors, people reason and make judgments in ways that systematically violate familiar canons of rationality on a wide array of problems. Those first surprising studies sparked the growth of a major research tradition whose impact has been felt in economics, political theory, medicine and other areas far removed from cognitive science. In Section 2, we will sketch a few of the better known experimental findings in this area. We’ve chosen these particular findings because they will play a role at a later stage of the paper. For readers who would like a deeper and more systematic account of the fascinating and disquieting research on reasoning and judgment, there are now several excellent texts and anthologies available. (shrink)

BackgroundThe pursuit of a cure for HIV is a high priority for researchers, funding agencies, governments and people living with HIV (PLWH). To date, over 250 biomedical studies worldwide are or have been related to discovering a safe, effective, and scalable HIV cure, most of which are early translational research and experimental medicine. As HIV cure research increases, it is critical to identify and address the ethical challenges posed by this research.MethodsWe conducted a scoping review of the growing HIV cure (...) research ethics literature, focusing on articles published in English peer-reviewed journals from 2013 to 2021. We extracted and summarized key developments in the ethics of HIV cure research. Twelve community advocates actively engaged in HIV cure research provided input on this summary and suggested areas warranting further ethical inquiry and foresight via email exchange and video conferencing.DiscussionDespite substantial scholarship related to the ethics of HIV cure research, additional attention should focus on emerging issues in six categories of ethical issues: (1) social value (ongoing and emerging biomedical research and scalability considerations); (2) scientific validity (study design issues, such as the use of analytical treatment interruptions and placebos); (3) fair selection of participants (equity and justice considerations); (4) favorable benefit/risk balance (early phase research, benefit-risk balance, risk perception, psychological risks, and pediatric research); (5) informed consent (attention to language, decision-making, informed consent processes and scientific uncertainty); and (6) respect for enrolled participants and community (perspectives of people living with HIV and affected communities and representation).ConclusionHIV cure research ethics has an unfinished agenda. Scientific research and bioethics should work in tandem to advance ethical HIV cure research. Because the science of HIV cure research will continue to rapidly advance, ethical considerations of the major themes we identified will need to be revisited and refined over time. (shrink)

The article proposes a comparison between certain aspects of Samuel Pufendorf's (1632-1694) conception of natural law and certain aspects of John Searle's social ontology. As in Pufendorf the entia moralia are superimposed on the entia physica, of which they constitute modes that ground systems of norms (natural or positive), so in Searle the institutional facts that are created by certain speech acts of the performative type are superimposed on the physical facts. The difference between Pufendorf and Searle is that (...) the latter understands all institutional facts as extrinsic to the physical facts (as a consequence of the peculiarity of their self-referentiality). For Pufendorf, on the other hand, moral modes are intrinsic to certain entia physica endowed with reason and will, whereas certain legal relations, like property, are extrinsic. (shrink)

The article deals with the question of the relationship between physical modes and moral modes in Samuel Pufendorf’s theory of natural law. By distinguishing these two kinds of modes (which are both modes of natural substances) Pufendorf anticipates the “law of Hume”, according to which the is and the ought are incommensurable. According to Pufendorf, Grotius and Hobbes’ conception of the state of nature is at fault because these authors make natural law a fact that would not be accompanied (...) by imposition and from which deontological notions would thus flow in a natural way. According to Pufendorf, on the contrary, deontological modes go hand in hand with the moral modes which are attached to certain natural substances only because of a divine imposition which wanted to make man a naturally sociable being. (shrink)

Th is work is a companion piece to "The American Worker," Karl Kautsky's reply to Werner Sombart’s Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? (1906), first published in English in the November 2003 edition of the journal Historial Materialism. In August 1909 Kautsky wrote an article on Samuel Gompers, the president of the American Federation of Labor, on the occasion of the latter's first European tour. Th e article was not only a criticism of Gompers’s anti-socialist "pure-and-simple" (...) unionism but also part of an ongoing battle between the revolutionary wing of German Social Democracy and the German trade-union officials. In this critical English edition we provide the historical background to the document as well as an overview of the issues raised by Gompers' visit to Germany, such as the bureaucratisation and increasing conservatism of the union leadership in both Germany and the United States, the role of the General Commission of Free Trade Unions in the abandonment of Marxism by the German Social-Democratic Party and the socialists’ attitude toward institutions promoting class collaboration like the National Civic Federation. (shrink)

Philosophical Investigations, EarlyView.

Throughout his cinema studies, Deleuze tends to define and to praise the cinematic in opposition to the theatrical. Cinema, for Deleuze, retains the potential to automate our perception of its images. Further, this capacity allows the cinema to profoundly disrupt the habitual patterns of its audience's thought. This article asks, however, whether Beckett's theatrical practice can be productively analysed through concepts derived from Deleuze's work on the cinema. In Beckett's Play and Not I, we see theatrical productions that strive for (...) and attain an automation of their audience's perception. While this theatrical experience is not identical to the ‘camera-consciousness’ that Deleuze observes in film, it can be understood through Deleuze's (Bergsonian) processes of habitual and attentive recognition, their failure and their subsequent transformation into passages of crystalline description. Finally, we can begin to elaborate the novel idea of a ‘crystal-theatre’; a theatre where the audience are entrapped within its construction, caught in a loop or circuit that runs between and complicates the realms of reality and illusion, immediately lived experience and artistic representation, the actual and the virtual. (shrink)

Philosophy of mind as a branch of philosophy has been growing. With a vast array of literature stemming from Plato to Descartes, down to Daniel Dennett and Paul and Patricia Churchland, there is no doubt that a lot has been said in that area regarding the mind-body problem, consciousness, the role of the human brain, etc. More so, with the advancement in neuroscience, newer and more interesting discussions linking neuroscience to philosophy of mind is inevitable. Equally as interesting, is (...) the philosophical work that is done in relation to the development of Artificial Intelligence in terms of robotics, artificial intelligence systems, technology-based human enhancements, etc. In all these, the African perspective has been largely underexplored and the salient perspectives of modern and contemporary African philosophers are rarely engaged. What we do in this chapter is to present an overview of the general concerns of this book. This concern is two-fold – the first part tackles issues related to consciousness, identity, and the mind-body problem, and the second part generally deals with issues related to Artificial intelligence and human enhancement. (shrink)

Bourdieu’s concept of ‘symbolic capital’ has been used to study various kinds of elites. This article shows how it can help us understand the status and privileges of early modern English courtiers—and how these could be won and lost. The discussion focuses on the funeral, burial and commemoration of the most successful of contemporary generals, Charles Blount, 1st Earl of Devonshire, 8th Baron Mountjoy (1563–1606), and sets these in the context of the Jacobean court’s concern with symbolic capital. It demonstrates (...) that the ceremonies normally accorded someone of Mountjoy’s rank and military success were not observed properly. He was penalised because he had married his long-standing lover, Lady Penelope Rich (1563–1607), the ‘Stella’ of Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnets. King James I showed the couple great favour until their marriage, which he declared unlawful and annulled. The heralds accepted his ruling, after disagreeing among themselves. The article shows that though the funeral was held in Westminster Abbey, Mountjoy was not buried there but in another London church, formerly known as Greyfriars, where a monument was erected to him. Lady Rich was personally and symbolically excluded from the funeral. Also discussed is the privately printed poem that Mountjoy’s client Samuel Daniel (1562–1619) wrote for the funeral, which defends Mountjoy and alludes, in a half-hidden way, to Penelope’s exclusion. The article concludes by considering how the symbolic capital of the whole court sank in this period. Most of the archival evidence considered has not been published before, some of it illustrated in figures, the rest in appendices (an armorial description of Mountjoy’s arms at his funeral, bills from the Westminster Abbey funeral and a translated extract from a contemporary history in Latin). (shrink)