11,710 research outputs found
Black Lives Matter: Decrypting Encrypted Racism
The agitation of the Black Lives Matter movement has dominated the public discourse in the United States. Mobilized against the killing of unarmed black people, the movement and their sympathizers have made a series of demands for justice and dignity for the black people. However, many critics have raised concern over the legitimacy of the phrase, black lives matter since all lives irrespective of race, should matter. This article does not intend to pursue the ongoing debate over the semantic use of black lives or all lives. Instead, the paper seeks to study, through the lenses of the African American critical theories (Tyson, 2015) and other relevant social conflict theories, the often neglected but important shift that has occurred in race relations in America, a shift from overt structural racism to its covert form - encrypted racism. It is the contention of this article that just as the Civil Rights Movement was instrumental in ending overt structural racism, open discrimination and segregation, the Black Lives Matter movement has been bravely instrumental in decrypting encrypted racism in the United States
Lucretius' arguments on the swerve and free-action
In his version of atomism, Lucretius made explicit reference to the concept of an intrinsic declination of the atom, the atomic swerve (clinamen in Latin), stressing that the time and space of the infinitesimal atomic vibration is uncertain. The topic of this article is the Epicurean and Lucretian arguments in favour of the swerve. Our exposition of the Lucretian model of the atomic clinamen will present and elucidate the respective considerations on the alleged role of the swerve in the generation of free-action
Reason, causation and compatibility with the phenomena
'Reason, Causation and Compatibility with the Phenomena' strives to give answers to the philosophical problem of the interplay between realism, explanation and experience. This book is a compilation of essays that recollect significant conceptions of rival terms such as determinism and freedom, reason and appearance, power and knowledge. This title discusses the progress made in epistemology and natural philosophy, especially the steps that led from the ancient theory of atomism to the modern quantum theory, and from mathematization to analytic philosophy. Moreover, it provides possible gateways from modern deadlocks of theory either through approaches to consciousness or through historical critique of intellectual authorities.
This work will be of interest to those either researching or studying in colleges and universities, especially in the departments of philosophy, history of science, philosophy of science, philosophy of physics and quantum mechanics, history of ideas and culture. Greek and Latin Literature students and instructors may also find this book to be both a fascinating and valuable point of reference
The Freedom(s) within Collective Agency: Tuomela and Sartre
In this paper, the goal is to investigate the nature of freedom enjoyed by participants in collective agency. Specifically, we aim to address the fol- lowing questions: in what respects are participants in collective agency able to exercise freedom in some weaker or stronger sense? In what ways is such col- lective or common freedom distinct from the freedom ascribed to individuals? Might there be different sorts of freedoms involved in and tolerated by collec- tive agency, each of which has its own role in determining the nature and effi- cacy of the bond uniting its participants? Clarification of just what such free- dom may involve and how it subsists within collective agency is not only im- portant for being able to demonstrate the instrumental value of social ontology to contemporary political debates. It may likewise contribute an important di- mension to the descriptive psychology of collective agency and shared inten- tionality, which is an approach deserving of more attention. Here, such clari- fication is undertaken via a comparison to the notions of freedom at stake in the respective accounts of sociality and collective agency provided by Raimo Tuomela and Jean-Paul Sartre
Revival of classical political economy: An exposition
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to discuss the theoretical foundations and policy implications of two of the offshoots of modern macroeconomics viz., supply-side economics and rational expectations; and second to evaluate the recent development of thinking in macroeconomics. Thereby it tries to bring forth the current state of macroeconomics, although the term “current” itself is a difficult term to define as the only constant thing is ‘change’, more so in case of an evolutionary science like economics. While highlighting the celebrated classical-Keynesian debate, it thoroughly examines the supply-side economics and rational expectations hypothesis with due importance to their practical application
Quantum Mechanics: Harbinger of a Non-Commutative Probability Theory?
In this paper we discuss the relevance of the algebraic approach to quantum
phenomena first introduced by von Neumann before he confessed to Birkoff that
he no longer believed in Hilbert space. This approach is more general and
allows us to see the structure of quantum processes in terms of non-commutative
probability theory, a non-Boolean structure of the implicate order which
contains Boolean sub-structures which accommodates the explicate classical
world. We move away from mechanical `waves' and `particles' and take as basic
what Bohm called a {\em structure process}. This enables us to learn new
lessons that can have a wider application in the way we think of structures in
language and thought itself.Comment: 20 pages, one figure. Invited pape
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