17,592 research outputs found

    The Divination of Things by Things

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    As humans our view of the world is predominantly restricted to our own experience and are largely oblivious to the alternate perspective of reality experienced by the objects that cohabit our spaces even though such objects are often integral components of our lives. This paper considers the growing phenomenon whereby non-human objects such as cutlery and appliances are having what might be considered human-like experiences through integration of advanced computational programming. By examining the services provided by Madame Bitsy’s Fantastic Future Forecasting and Fortune Telling Emporium for the Internet of Living Things, which is a fully autonomous online fortune telling service for Internet of Things enabled objects and services, we attempt to illuminate what it means to be a digitally connected object

    On the Status of Natural Divination in Stoicism

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    Cicero’s De divinatione portrays the Stoics as unanimous in advocating both natural and technical divination. I argue that, contrary to this, the earlier leaders of the school like Chrysippus had reasons to consider natural divination to be significantly epistemically inferior to its technical counterpart. The much more favorable treatment of natural divination in De divinatione is likely the result of changes introduced later, probably by Posidonius

    On Buddhism, Divination and the Worldly Arts: Textual Evidence from the Theravāda Tradition

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    This essay attends to the sticky web of indigenous terminology concerning divination and other so-called “mundane” or “worldly” arts, focusing primarily upon Buddhist canonical texts preserved in Pāli, augmented by references to commentarial and exegetical literature. It asks: How have some Buddhists, as evinced in this canonical and exegetical literature, understood the broader category of “worldly arts,” which includes techniques we call divinatory? Are Buddhists discouraged from engaging with such practices, as has been commonly asserted? If so, then for whom, specifically, are such words of discouragement primarily meant? And why, specifically, are such practices discouraged? Are the penalties for practicing them severe or lenient? Are there any exceptions or instances when practicing worldly arts is tolerated or encouraged? And what might we conclude, more broadly, from the textual evidence? These tricky questions bear particularly upon the complex, legalistic body of Buddhist monastic rules and their interpretation, as well as the interpretation of a few passages from Buddhist canonical literature that are arguably less straightforward than has sometimes been assumed or asserted

    Obscure Existential Narratives: Predetermination and Freedom in Nepalese Horoscopic Knowledge.

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    Nepali astrological divination can be seen as a form sense-making which, in providing access to the ‘hidden motifs’ attained to determine life events, mitigates the irreducibility of being-in- the-world by providing existential narratives. Conveying hope to act upon what is initially approached as a hopeless fate, astrological knowledge forwards the perception that troubling events, apparently out of control, are also liable to be acted upon. This reveals a permanent tension between ‘fatalism’ and ‘freedom’ that challenges rendering Nepal exclusively in fatalist terms, as argued by the Nepali anthropologist Dor Bahadur Bista. Yet, accounting for these reinterpretations requires a personally-tailored inquiry, usually overlooked by sociocentric approaches that patronizingly disregard people as mere carriers of a worldview, as in the case of the ontological turn

    Polytheism and the Euthyphro

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    In this reading of the Euthyphro, Socrates and Euthyphro are seen less in a primordial conflict between reason and devotion, than as sincere Hellenic polytheists engaged in an inquiry based upon a common intuition that, in addition to the irreducible agency of the Gods, there is also some irreducible intelligible content to holiness. This reading is supported by the fact that Euthyphro does not claim the authority of revelation for his decision to prosecute his father, but rather submits it to elenchus, and that Euthyphro does not embrace the ‘solution’ of theological voluntarism when Socrates explicitly offers it. Since the goal of this inquiry is neither to eliminate the noetic content of the holy, nor to eliminate the Gods’ agency, the purpose of the elenchus becomes the effort to articulate the results of this productive tension between the Gods and the intelligible on the several planes of Being implied by each conception of the holy which is successively taken up and dialectically overturned to yield the conception appropriate to the next higher plane, a style of interpretation characteristic of the ancient Neoplatonists

    Ingesting Magic: Ingredients and Ecstatic Outcomes in the Greek and Demotic Magical Papyri

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    There are spells in the Greek and Demotic Magical Papyri which promise divine visitations, assistants, ecstatic states, vessel inquiries, and vivid dreams. They also require powerful psychoactive botanical ingredients. How did these spells work and what were the expectations of somebody purchasing them? Looking at the ingredients of visionary spells and relying on the pharmacology of Dioscorides and Theophrastus, I ascertain how these spells achieved the promised visions and altered states of consciousness for the user. These spells guarantee great spiritual and recreational entertainment to the client who would need an abundance of money to purchase the ingredients

    Luck in Aristotle's Physics and Ethics

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    I discuss how Aristotle’s formulation of the problem of moral luck relates to his natural philosophy. I review well-known passages from Nicomachean Ethics I/X and Eudemian Ethics I/VII and Physics II, but in the main focus on EE VII 14 (= VIII 2). I argue that Aristotle’s position there (rejecting the elimination of luck, but reducing luck so far as possible to incidental natural and intelligent causes) is not only consistent with his treatment of luck in Physics II, but is to be expected, given that the dialectical path of EE VII 14 runs exactly parallel to that of Physics II 4-6. Although Aristotle resolves some issues that he raises, he cannot avoid the problem of constitutive moral luck that, as Thomas Nagel puts it, pertains to ‘the kind of person you are, where this is not just a question of what you deliberately do, but of your inclinations, capacities, and temperament’. The problem for Aristotle follows not only from his ethical positions, but also directly from his more general physical and political principles and assumptions. Furthermore, the problem touches the very essence of Aristotle’s moral theory
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