Truth is standardly considered a requirement on epistemic acceptability. But science and philosophy deploy models, idealizations and thought experiments that prescind from truth to achieve other cognitive ends. I argue that such felicitous falsehoods function as cognitively useful fictions. They are cognitively useful because they exemplify and afford epistemic access to features they share with the relevant facts. They are falsehoods in that they diverge from the facts. Nonetheless, they are true enough to serve their epistemic purposes. Theories that contain (...) them have testable consequences, hence are factually defeasible. (shrink)

There is a growing need to increase our understanding of ethical decision making in U.S. based organizations. The authors examine the complexity of creating uniform ethical standards even when the meaning of ethical behavior is being debated. The nature of these controversies are considered, and three important dimensions for ethical decision making are discussed: leaders with integrity and a strong sense of social responsibility, organization cultures that foster dialogue and dissent, and organizations that are willing to reflect on and learn (...) from their actions. Leaders with integrity demonstrate consistency between vision and action that promotes trust, regularly concern themselves with developing moral standards, and are proactive agents of change in an increasingly complex world. Organizational cultures that support dialogue suspend judgments and increase their capacity to think together towards new levels of understanding. Ethical concepts evolve in these organizational cultures, and actions are informed and responsible. Organizations that reflect on their actions engage in double loop learning so that the time taken to reflect on the past and present leads to a more judicious and ethical future. In essence, the authors point to organizational guidelines for ethical decision making that lead to an increase in members' capacity to think and act ethically. (shrink)

This article attempts to explain and analyse the nature and characteristic features of a person’s privacy in the on‐line environment in order to assess how these features shape the need for protection. Since the internet has invaded our everyday lives, individual privacy is exposed in different ways in cyberspace. It is important to note that the Internet lacks the traditional characteristics of a ‘physical’ space, but the interests and inherent values protected by privacy remain the same in cyberspace. The article (...) discusses the factors that shape a different nature of online privacy compared to its off line counterpart. Online privacy may not be a novel right, but it is definitely one exposed to a whole new environment which has its own special need for protection. (shrink)

Incommensurability between successive scientific theories—the impossibility of empirical evidence dictating the choice between them—was Thomas Kuhn's most controversial proposal. Toward defending it, he directed much effort over his last 30 years into formulating precise conditions under which two theories would be undeniably incommensurable with one another. His first step, in the late 1960s, was to argue that incommensurability must result when two theories involve incompatible taxonomies. The problem he then struggled with, never obtaining a solution that he found entirely satisfactory, (...) was how to extend this initial line of thought to sciences like physics in which taxonomy is not so transparently dominant as it is, for example, in chemistry. This paper reconsiders incommensurability in the light of examples in which evidence historically did and did not carry over continuously from old laws and theories to new ones. The transition from ray to wave optics early in the nineteenth century, we argue, is especially informative in this regard. The evidence for the theory of polarization within ray optics did not carry over to wave optics, so that this transition can be regarded as a prototypical case of discontinuity of evidence, and hence of incommensurability in the way Kuhn wanted. Yet the evidence for classic geometric optics did carry over to wave optics, notwithstanding the fundamental conceptual readjustment that Fresnel's wave theory required. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Painting in Tongues:Faith-Based Languages of Formalist ArtKevin Z. Moore (bio)A philosophical problem is created by the incoherence between the earlier state and the later one.—Ian Hacking, Historical OntologyWhatever is happening to evidence-based treatment? When the facts contravene conventional wisdom, go with the anecdotes?—New York Times, "Science Times," February 14, 2006Cephalopods have a visual language that may be considered artful; humans have written and vocalized languages that are sometimes artful; (...) but it is doubtful that there is such a thing as a "language of art," particularly in the sense that twentieth-century formalists and their critics carelessly speak of one or many. Cephalopods flash color-forms on their hides to communicate intents and emotions, maybe even to project plans. They speak in tattooed tongues through neurologically embossed patterns and color field designs displayed on the skin. The large-eyed sea creatures communicate voicelessly in a visual language of pure color-forms, each species perhaps having its own dialect. Though not a full or official language by any means, their color-forms display the ideal that twentieth-century formalist artists sought to graphically realize (referential and conceptual immediacy, emotional coloring, communication via pure, that is, nonpictorial, form). Formalist inspired artists and their critic-expositors describe abstract pattern-painting as though it were a visual language equal to that of the cephalopod. Yet [End Page 40] although we can reasonably imagine cephalopods getting the correct message by observation, we cannot reasonably imagine observers getting any message at all, let alone the intended message, from abstractionist painting. This casts suspicion on the formalists' claims about visual language. Observers cannot and famously do not get anything "out" of formalist pattern paintings, though they do project quite a lot "into" them. The telling difference between octopus and artist? Cephalopods communicate visually—their survival depends on it. Formalists do not, though the survival and flourishing of their art depends upon the belief that they do.Notably, explanations of what exactly a formalist language of art is goes missing from accounts of sense and reference in the relevant literature, where we learn that this or that painting exhibits this or that language of art but never how this or that painting functions as a language of any sort. The "language of art" phrase, it seems, has the same force as mentioning truth or existence: it explains nothing. Talk of a language of art suggests merely that a painting exhibits a communicative intent; it does not explain how that intent is linguistically mediated. The phrase is ostensive and nominal, not descriptive and expository.Prior to the twentieth century there may have been some justification for this language since art was shaped by objective reference, identifiable codes (sign and symbol systems), and recognizable scenes (compositions) that made painting a language-like public media. Observers could see immediately or "read" paintings by observation as though they were reading a language. Images were shaped by observation; reference was fixed by convention. The formalist revolution in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries dismantled the public character of representation in painting. After the revolution, the new art that appeared was a sort of visual humpty-dumptyism, to invoke a language metaphor. Formalist imagery functioned the way words did for Mr. Carroll's Mr. Dumpty: they meant what the artist intended them to mean and not what observation or convention constrained them to mean. Reference and meaning were as arbitrary as the visual forms chosen to bear them. Once a communicative medium, painting became an expressive medium, the values of the latter superseding those of the former wholly or in part. Even when a formalist painting alluded to a conventional arrangement (a landscape or portrait, for example), the composition was as visually parodic of genre as Mr. Carroll's Jabberwocky was verbally parodic of narrative poetry, preserving syntax (form) but not the integrity of the formal agents of communication. Both are forms of nonsense, yet only one intentionally so.Styles of formalism do not facilitate the observation of intended reference; they are not effective forms of communication because they are not languages. If the basic function of a visual art is to communicate a specific... (shrink)

Religions, ideologies try to give a complete vision of the world a vision containing both its origin, explanation and a “normative kit”: a collection of precepts and rules, which should regulate human activities and behavior. Their synergetic meaning is clear: if embraced by all they allow for development of strong synergetic effects on the social macro scales. These in turn may lead to creation of order and beauty, of intellectual, spiritual and moral development within men and in society. In this (...) consist the elements of their natural—i.e. not explicitly reasoned out—wisdom. However, as they contain also some elements of harmful consequences—at least if they are literally accepted and in a fundamentalist manner practiced—they cannot be universally accepted. But—rejecting them we lose also the important sourcesof natural—or should we say instinctive—wisdom.Could the solution of this contradiction, of this one of the basic human sources of suffering be looked for in the modern science of complexity?Synergetics and the sciences of complex systems in general offer a solid scientific base for a meta-philosophical, universalist intellectual framework. Its offspring the social synergetics offers concrete propositions of optimized social structures. Optimized in the sense of espousing the main synergetic effects with being at the same time free of the negative “side effects” happening when religions or ideologies are the source of synergism.Finally a connection is discussed between the presented ideas and the concept of “love of wisdom”. The term “love of wisdom” may be understood as striving not only to possess a “sound and serene judgment regarding the conduct of life” but also a practical ability to act according to that judgment.This ability may be also expressed using the information-thermodynamic concepts of synergetics. Indeed without the ever continuing negentropy transformation neither survival of a complex system like man or society nor its continuing development—uncovering of all his “hidden potentials” is possible.To assure maximization of this transformation process creation of strong synergetic effects—of reinforcement, of positive feedback—between all human beings—i.e. not excluding any nations, any social groups, and any individuals—are necessary. Acting towards local and global realization of such a structure everywhere on our planet constitutes the essence of social wisdom.Removing all obstacles towards this goal—obstacles existing on the intellectual, emotional and spiritual level—should be one of the most important tasks of various institutions, of state structures, of purified from mythical elements ideologies, of man oriented sciences and above all of the modern universalism.Thus striving towards its realization is an expression of the love of wisdom. Of wisdom once based on the elements of mythos and now regained in the full light of Logos. (shrink)

Christine Buci-Glucksmann’s__ _The Madness of Vision_ is one of the most influential studies in phenomenological aesthetics of the baroque. Integrating the work of Merleau-Ponty with Lacanian psychoanalysis, Renaissance studies in optics, and twentieth-century mathematics, the author asserts the materiality of the body and world in her aesthetic theory. All vision is embodied vision, with the body and the emotions continually at play on the visual field. Thus vision, once considered a clear, uniform, and totalizing way of understanding the material world, (...) actually dazzles and distorts the perception of reality. In each of the nine essays that form _The Madness of Vision_ Buci-Glucksmann develops her theoretical argument via a study of a major painting, sculpture, or influential visual image—Arabic script, Bettini’s “The Eye of Cardinal Colonna,” Bernini’s _Saint Teresa_ and his 1661 fireworks display to celebrate the birth of the French dauphin, Caravaggio’s _Judith Beheading Holofernes,_ the Paris arcades, and Arnulf Rainer’s selfportrait, among others—and deftly crosses historical, national, and artistic boundaries to address Gracián’s_ El Criticón_; Monteverdi’s opera _Orfeo; _the poetry of Hafiz, John Donne, and Baudelaire; as well as baroque architecture and Anselm Kiefer’s Holocaust paintings. In doing so, Buci-Glucksmann makes the case for the pervasive influence of the baroque throughout history and the continuing importance of the baroque in contemporary arts. (shrink)

These are but just some of the stories covered in this entertaining book that deals with the history of physics from the end of the 19th-century to about 1930.Quips, Quotes and Quanta (2nd Edition) is unique in that it contains anecdotes on ...

This chapter contains section titled: Organizing the Notes for On Certainty Groundlessness and Language‐games Searching for Primary Links Between Language and Reality Seeing Logic and Practice Pictures, Propositions and Reality Forms of Life Practices and Parallels Is the Title on Certainty a Happy One? Is on Certainty a Polemic against Moore? Is Wittgenstein's Main Interest in Moore's Propositions the Nature of Nonsense? Does Wittgenstein Say that the Propositions he is Interested in Form a Class, and Does he Say the Same (...) of all of Them? Are Wittgenstein's Propositions Context‐free? What is the Connection between Wittgenstein's Propositions and Logic? Is Wittgenstein Appealing to Primitive, Pre‐linguistic Reactions as the Basis of our Language‐games? What is Meant by the Sureness in Our Language‐games? How are Our Conclusions Related to the Notions of a Form of Life or World‐picture? How do Wittgenstein's Conclusions Differ from Some Classical and Contemporary Views of Our Relation to the World? Rhees's Development of Wittgenstein's Concerns. (shrink)

On ethics with special reference to Sufism.

Philosophical study of rationalism and postmodernism.

On democracy in Islam with critical analysis of modern political theories in the light Quran.

In Zeno’s “proof” of the immobility of the flying arrow, something that many centuries later Kant will call the dynamic transcendental scheme of the time order is omitted. We will investigate the connection of the time order scheme with the categories of relations and analogies of experience. The problems produced by Zeno’s kinematic paradox are being reformulated and accordingly solved in a particular way. The error in Zeno’s conclusion is that one dynamic phenomenon (i. e., flying arrow) that is subsumed (...) under the transcendental scheme of time sequence is viewed as being subordinate only to the mathematical schemes of time series and time content. (shrink)

At the current level of economic development, the digital transformation of society is an important factor in advancing any social structure. The purpose of the present study was to explore the transformation of a traditional society into a digital one, with a focus on ethical and environmental aspects. The study draws on a variety of information analysis methods to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of digitalization, including the environmental aspect. Our research revealed that in Russia, the only highly digitalized (...) sectors were information technology and finance. Digitalization is strikingly different in the European countries, where only transport and building industries slowly implemented digital technologies into their business processes. We also examined digitalization levels in 7 Moscow universities. The universities managed to improve their digitalization scores with the help of recommendations developed for online learning, such as selection of quality software, having qualified teaching staff, constant monitoring, and evaluation of knowledge. The findings can be used in economic, social, and environmental spheres since they highlight the ambiguous effects of digitalization using practical examples. (shrink)