Blogio žaibas ir nepaliudytas gerumas: pokalbis su Vasilijumi Grossmanu, Gyvenimas ir likimas

[full article, abstract in English; abstract in Lithuanian] The reviled Jewish-Russian war correspondent Vasily Grossman wrote a masterful novel Life and Fate about the historical battle of Stalingrad (1943), in which he sharply fillets both the Nazi and Stalinist forms of terror in a literary style. The great ideas about society lead to abuse of power and to oppression. Against the common ideals, Grossman argues for a form of small goodness that takes place on the concrete intersubjective plane. In this article, I elucidate the literary ideas of Grossman by confronting them with analogous philosophical approaches. First of all, the connection between modern rationality and a concentration camp is discussed. Both are accompanied by a form of thoughtlessness. The different forms of small goodness are then analyzed: the refusal to be complicit, the criticism of the great ideologies, the self-sacrifice, the deviation from the command, and the usual ethical norms. For Grossman, the possibility of ethics distinguishes man from the surrounding world. Humanity will remain as long as people are capable of the small goodness.[straipsnis ir santrauka anglų kalba, santrauka lietuvių kalba] Plūstamas žydų ir rusų kilmės karo korespondentas Vasilijus Grossmanas apie istorinį Stalingrado mūšį (1943 m.) parašė meistrišką romaną Gyvenimas ir likimas, kuriame literatūriniu stiliumi be gailesčio skrodžiama tiek nacistinė, tiek stalinistinė teroro forma. Didžiosios idėjos apie visuomenės organizavimą privedė prie piktnaudžiavimo valdžia ir priespaudos, todėl bendriems idealams Grossmanas priešpriešina mažus gerumo veiksmus, atliekamus konkrečioje tarpžmogiškoje plotmėje. Straipsnio autorius literatūrines Grossmano idėjas nušviečia sugretindamas jas su analogiškais filosofiniais požiūriais. Pirmiausia aptariama sąsaja tarp modernaus racionalumo ir koncentracijos stovyklos. Juos abu lydi tam tikra nemąstymo forma. Paskui analizuojamos skirtingos mažų gerumo veiksmų formos: atsisakymas prisidėti prie nusikaltimo, didžiųjų ideologijų, pasiaukojimo kritika, nukrypimas nuo komandos ir įprastų etinių normų. Grossmano manymu, etikos galimybė išskiria žmogų iš jį supančio pasaulio. Žmogiškumas išliks tol, kol žmonės bus pajėgūs atlikti mažus gerumo veiksmus

Atsakomybės etika ir politikos dviprasmybė Levino filosofijoje

The destruction of man in the Shoah or Holocaust did not mean that Levinas argues in favor of turning away from the socio-historical reality to cultivate his own little garden. The deepest truth of subjectivity can be found in an alterity that calls for a socio-political responsibility. The political implications are rooted in different layers of Levinas’s thought. In his Talmudic comments, Levinas questions the reality of war as the truth of politics. But his explorations of subjectivity, ethical relationality and society allow to understand different political options such as contract theory (responsibility in the first person), liberation philosophy and human rights (responsibility in the second person) and the necessity of building a just society (ethics in the third person). Paradoxically, a just and equitable society ignores the uniqueness of the unique other. While organized responsibility is necessary, it introduces a new form of violence. In this article, we bring together the different layers in Levinas’s political vision and we explore its limits. A fundamental question is whether Levinas’s vision of politics is based on ethics or whether his ethics is a critique of politics.Žmogaus sunaikinimas Šoa ar Holokauste nereiškė Levino atsitraukimo nuo socioistorinės realybės ir užsidarymo savo mažame sodelyje. Giliausia subjektyvumo tiesa gali būti rasta kitybėje, kuri kviečia imtis sociopolitinės atsakomybės. Levino minties politinės prasmės įšaknytos skirtinguose jo mąstymo sluoksniuose. Savo Talmudo komentaruose Levinas kvestionuoja karo tikrovę kaip politikos tiesą. Tačiau jo subjektyvumo, etinio santykiškumo ir visuomenės tyrinėjimai leidžia suprasti tokias skirtingas politines galimybes kaip kontrakto teorija (pirmojo asmens atsakomybė), išsilaisvinimo filosofija ir žmogaus teisės (antrojo asmens atsakomybė) ir būtinybė kurti teisingą visuomenę (trečiojo asmens etika). Paradoksalu tai, kad teisinga ir lygi visuomenė ignoruoja unikalaus kito unikalumą. Organizuota atsakomybė yra būtina, tačiau ji įveda naują prievartos formą. Šiame straipsnyje sugretinami skirtingi Levino politinės vizijos sluoksniai ir ieškoma tos vizijos ribų. Iškeliamas esminis klausimas: ar Levino politikos vizija pagrįsta etika, ar jo etika yra politikos kritika

Multimodal Education: Philosophy and Practice, by Baranova, Jurate and Duobliene, Lilija

Multimodal Education: Philosophy and Practice, by Baranova, Jurate and Duobliene, Lilija, Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2021, ISBN 1565183495, 9781565183490

G. Agambenas ir biopolitinė Šoa samprata

The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, in his Homo Sacer-cycle, has developed a new paradigm for thinking the Shoah. Departing from Michel Foucault’s biopolitical thought, he argues that modern political power is made possible by the helix-structure of sovereign power and homo sacer. Sovereign power is situated at the threshold of the prevailing juridico-political order and can, in a state of exception, violently suspend or establish the law. In this decision, homo sacer is legally excluded from the law. When the state of exception is made general, the law of sovereignty governs all life and everyone becomes homo sacer. This happened concretely in the Shoah. In the concentration camps, the Muselmann is produced. During the Shoah by Bullet, as happened in Lithuania, the generalised sovereign biopolitics turns into radical thanatopolitics.Italų filosofas Giorgio Agambenas savo Homo sacer cikle išplėtojo naują būdą, kaip mąstyti apie Šoa (hebr. Shoah). Atsispirdamas nuo Michelio Foucault biopolitinės minties, jis teigia, kad šiuolaikinę politinę valdžią įgalina suverenios galios ir homo sacer spiralės struktūra. Suvereni galia stovi ant vyraujančios juridinės-politinės tvarkos slenksčio ir esant „išimties būklei“ prievarta gali suspenduoti ar įsteigti įstatymą. Toks sprendimas teisiškai palieka homo sacer anapus įstatymo. Išimties situaciją pavertus visuotine, suvereno įstatymas valdo visą gyvenimą ir kiekvienas tampa homo sacer. Kaip tik tai vyko Šoa atveju. Koncentracijos stovyklose sukurtas Muselmann. Šoa iššaudant atveju, kaip nutiko Lietuvoje, suvisuotinta suvereni biopolitika virsta radikalia mirties politika

Runtime protection via dataflow flattening

Software running on an open architecture, such as the PC, is vulnerable to inspection and modification. Since software may process valuable or sensitive information, many defenses against data analysis and modification have been proposed. This paper complements existing work and focuses on hiding data location throughout program execution. To achieve this, we combine three techniques: (i) periodic reordering of the heap, (ii) migrating local variables from the stack to the heap and (iii) pointer scrambling. By essentialy flattening the dataflow graph of the program, the techniques serve to complicate static dataflow analysis and dynamic data tracking. Our methodology can be viewed as a data-oriented analogue of control-flow flattening techniques. Dataflow flattening is useful in practical scenarios like DRM, information-flow protection, and exploit resistance. Our prototype implementation compiles C programs into a binary for which every access to the heap is redirected through a memory management unit. Stack-based variables may be migrated to the heap, while pointer accesses and arithmetic may be scrambled and redirected. We evaluate our approach experimentally on the SPEC CPU2006 benchmark suit

Item-based assessment of translation competence : chimera of objectivity versus prospect of reliable measurement

In the course of the past decade, scholars in Translation Studies have repeatedly expressed the need for more empirical research on translation assessment. Notwithstanding the many pleas for “objectivity” that have been voiced in the literature, the issue of reliability remains unaddressed. Although there is no consensus on the best method for measuring the quality of human or machine translations, it is clear that in both cases measurement error will need to be accounted for. This is especially the case in high-stake situations such as assessments that lead to translation competence being certified. In this article we focus on the summative assessment of translation competence in an educational context. We explore the psychometric quality of two assessment methods: the CDI method (Eyckmans, Anckaert, & Segers, 2009) and the PIE method (Kockaert & Segers, 2014; 2017; Segers & Kockaert, 2016). In our study, the reliability of both methods is compared empirically by scoring the same set of translations (n > 100) according to each method

decodeRNA-predicting non-coding RNA functions using guilt-by-association

Although the long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) landscape is expanding rapidly, only a small number of lncRNAs have been functionally annotated. Here, we present decodeRNA (http://www.decoderna.org), a database providing functional contexts for both human lncRNAs and microRNAs in 29 cancer and 12 normal tissue types. With state-of-the-art data mining and visualization options, easy access to results and a straightforward user interface, decodeRNA aims to be a powerful tool for researchers in the ncRNA field