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Kazimierz Twardowski’s article „On clear and unclear philosophical style” (O jasnym niejasnym stylu filozoficznym) is considered as one of his manifests of the Lvov-Warsaw School: clarity of expressing thoughts was one of methodological determinants of this school. Because of some passages in this article, Twardowski is often considered as a philosopher who believed that we may only think in words. In the article, Twardowski’s views on the relation between language and speech are analyzed through the prism of the less known Twardowski’s writings with application of some theoretical distinctions.

This electronic archival document is a collection of 18 articles relevant to Project Alpha, an intervention designed and executed by the magician James Randi and his confederates.

The purpose of this note is to discuss some aspects of Prof. Smith's paper about Virgil and the ambiguity. The note is divided into three parts: a) a discussion about the ambiguity of the empirical things in Plato; b) a reconsideration of Heraclitus' fragment 26 DK, in the light of some observation by H.G. Gadamer; c) a short comparison between Virgil's Polydorus and Dante's Pier Delle Vigne about the uncanny nature of their otherworldly transfiguration.

Last year, this Journal (JSE 24(1), Spring 2010) contained a Commentary in which Jürgen Keil proposed an explanatory model for cases of the reincarnation type (CORTs), suggesting that most and perhaps all CORTs can better be fitted into a framework of psi without the reincarnation or survival hypothesis. We present several features that should be considered in more detail before the pretension to explain all CORTs with the hypothesis outlined by Keil can be regarded as justified. Among others, such features include possible modes of how memories of a previous life might be selected and dramatized into ostensible personal memories of children, departure dreams, CORTs announced via mediumistic communications, cases of the possession type, ostensible memories of intermission periods between the two lives in question, CORTs which involve twins, maternal impressions, crisis apparitions, and the argument of cumulative force. Furthermore, we add comments on possible relations of CORTs with the Lamarckian theory of evolution.

A review was conducted of Crookes' lever experiments on the psychic force proposed by Daniel D. Home. The levers were 36"-long boards with a fulcrum at 1.5" and 4.5" from the left end in the first and second experiments, respectively, and had a spring-balance suspension at the right end. In the first experiment, Crookes did not provide sufficient evidence to conclude that the experimental results could not be explained using Newtonian mechanics. In the second experiment, direct contact between Home's hand and the lever was prevented by a water vessel that had been set exactly over the fulcrum. If the gravity center of the vessel is assumed to have been off-center by even 5 mm to the right of the fulcrum, a force greater than 114 lbf would have been required to be exerted on the lever when Home's fingertips were dipped in the water to produce the observed increase in spring force (0.71 lbf); this is physically impossible. The analyses show that neither changes in the buoyant force on the dipped fingers nor water sloshing or external tremors can explain the experimental results. Additionally, some well-known paranormal phenomena are listed for a possible future extension of this study.

Dr. Laszlo’s hypothesis (2009) is in my opinion appealing on many levels. He proposes that phenomena of apparent transpersonal communication between human beings are due to the intermediary of information-carrying holograms in the reactive quantum vacuum produced by human brain activity. He also suggests that valid information regarding the world in general is available through the same mechanism, on the grounds that all material objects “excite the ground state of the [zero point] fi eld” and produce further such holograms. On this hypothesis we are literally immersed in a sea of information, with the capacity for accessing that information as well as producing more of it by our own thought processes.

The purpose of the present paper is to analyse the problem of cost generated by the performance of a duty to rescue. The authors consider three distinct views of this problem by confronting a scenario in which one party decides to rescue another, where providing such assistance seems to involve an infringement upon the property rights of the third party. For example, A rescues drowning B but in the process of doing so A apparently trespasses upon C’s land. The question that the authors pose is: Assuming that there is a duty to rescue, who should be charged with the cost of what seems to be an infringement upon the third party’s property rights? The paper analyses the following possibilities: the cost should be borne by (a) the victim of the emer- gency, (b) the rescuer, (c) the third party whose rights seem to have been encroached upon. Even though the authors begin with a pronouncedly libertarian assumption about the third party’s absolute property rights, in the course of the discussion they come to the conclusion that it is exactly this assumption that should be further probed and ultimately relaxed in order to reach the most plausible solution to the present dilemma.

This paper presents an overview of my work in philosophy from my first book on Friedrich Schiller and the political sublime to my most recent project on listening to traumatic forms of violence. Starting with a reflection on the autobiographical character of philosophy, I propose to take up the question of an aesthetic dimension of philosophical critique, where aesthetics is understood as an always already embodied perspective on the world, on truth, and on philosophical activity, as well as an always already political realm, where the distribution of sense pre-determines our approach and articulation of experience. Departing from aesthetics understood and deployed as critique, the paper moves on to ask about the specific frameworks of sense or grammars that determine in advance the conditions of audibility in the realms of memory-building and history-making—particularly in those contexts where historical, political, and institutional forms of violence produce silencing and erasure. Putting in dialogue the latter with decolonial studies, I (re)interpret “traumatic violence” as a colonizing form of violence, understanding that one of its central aspects is that it is not only an assault on life but on the conditions of production of sense that make life legible as such. In this context, my project on grammars of listening seeks to carefully unpack these complex intersections while also explaining why I believe that a radical form of listening is an essential subversive/imaginative strategy against traumatic/colonial violence.

This paper analyzes the innovative way of doing critical philosophy that María del Rosario Acosta López proposes in her aesthetics of resistance and grammars of the unheard. The paper examines the contributions of two sets of conversations with Acosta López’s critical philosophy. In the first place, staging a dialogue between Acosta López and Black feminist philosophy, the article offers a defence of reconceptualizing philosophy in the 21st Century through a dialogue with the voices and perspectives of the excluded and silenced—a reconceptualization that reimagines the critical role of philosophy. In the second place, the paper calls attention to the crucial significance of Acosta López’s aesthetics of resistance for contemporary debates in contemporary political epistemology, putting in conversation her grammars of the unheard with my epistemology of resist- ance and María Lugones’s concept of complex communication. This second conversation also underscores a new way of understanding the critical and transformative function of philosophy by centering the voices and perspectives of the excluded and silenced.

We conceive of ourselves as capable of acting in response to normative reasons. Given that normative reasons are facts, this self-conception entails that we are capable of acting in response to facts. Arguments from error cases might seem to force us to deflate this self-conception, for they seem to show that to act in light of a fact must simply be a way of acting in light of a belief. The starting point of this paper is the rejection of this deflationary view. In order to reject the argument from error cases, we should adopt a disjunctive view of motivating reasons. According to this view there are two distinct ways of acting in light of a consideration: acting in light of a fact and acting in light of a belief. Disjunctivism about motivating reasons, however, is the target of a skeptical challenge grounded in a cognitivist account of the mind. According to this account, cognition is to explained in terms of the manipulation of representations and there is no meaningful difference between acting in light of a fact and acting in light of a belief: in both cases, one decides in light of a representation. The goal of this paper is to defend disjunctivism from this objection. In order to do so I appeal to Gibson’s ecological psychology. I argue that the ecological account of perception allows us to hold that in the case of actions guided by perception we act in light of the facts themselves (not representations of those facts) and that the same approach can be extended to cover cases in which we act in light of sensorily unavailable facts.

Just as a small band of scholars has endeavored to explore the phenomenon of “atmosphere” – i.e., the characteristic feel of a particular situation, circumstance, artifact or era – another group of researchers has shed light on the defining characteristics of “haunts,” those places where the atmosphere may, to some people, seem strange, spooky or off-putting. The fields of atmosphere studies, hauntology, and spectrality attest to these investigations. However, scholars of atmosphere rarely refer to haunts, while scholars of hauntology and spectrality insufficiently emphasize the affective core of atmospheres. This paper argues that affect – which nearly all studies acknowledge as the key element of atmosphere – is equally central to the phenomenon of haunts. Since affect is a property of living creatures, the paper proposes that haunted atmospheres attest to the quality or intensity of feelings expressed by individuals, even if they are no longer in that location or no longer living. Just as atmospheres can be sensed but not grasped, just as they are ineffable yet discernable, and just as they are fleeting yet can also linger, they resemble feelings, moods and ghosts. The term “presence,” which recurs throughout atmosphere studies, hauntology, and spectrality, is closely considered for its connection with concepts of time, immediacy, and memory. Three experiences of the author are presented as touchstones for evaluating the possibilities discussed. The paper concludes by discussing our species’ “ocular-centrism,” i.e., its tendency to conclude that what can be seen and definitively measured is real whereas what is invisible and shifting is less real or not at all.

By examining the songs, media, and material culture associated with the legendary monster Mothman, this paper shows how folklore can become commodified and what issues may arise as a result. By using Paredes’ theory of “folklorization” and McDowell’s concept of “commemoration,” legend scholars can track historical developments across space and time to understand the metamorphoses a legend undergoes and why. Ultimately, this paper uses the term “narrative hijacking” to describe the process in which a historical event such as the Silver Bridge collapse of 1976 is overshadowed by its association with a legend, which in this case, is the story of the Mothman.

In this paper I address the relationship between Hegel and Heidegger from the perspective of the dialectic between end and beginning. After the introduction, in the second part of the paper I analyze Hegel’s position in the history of being as the beginning of the end of metaphysics. Afterwards I address Heidegger’s interpretation of the beginning of Hegel’s Logic, showing how the essential beginning is the end of the completed system. In the fourth part of the text, I discuss how Heidegger wants to position himself in relation to Hegel, mainly examining their different interpretation of negativity and initiality. I will argue that the key word for understanding their different positions is “event”. Whereas Hegel’s system leaves no room for any beginning as event, but every beginning is reabsorbed by the finished and concluded system, for Heidegger thought must time and time again make itself initial and evential.

The subject of this paper is Heidegger's understanding of world and world-formation [Weltbildung] in his lecture The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (GA 29/30) and his references to the idealistic philosophy of Schelling, such as the ancient thought of Aristotle and Heraclitus. I will put forward the following thesis: World is prevailing and, as this prevailing, it is the being of beings as such as whole in the projection of world that lets it prevail. In this paper, I will clarify how the world prevails, how Dasein forms the world, and the significance of physis, logos and as-structure in this context. I will also show that Heidegger's concept of world-formation, which is less discussed in research, can be thought together with his concepts of being-in-the-world and worldhood. Finally, I will discuss some of the difficulties of Heidegger's understanding of the world and propose some solutions.

I would like to comment on Watson’s interesting paper in the Spring 2022 Journal of Scientific Exploration on the subject of the 1933 Hugh Gray Loch Ness photograph. Having a couple of Roland Watson’s books in my personal library (which I strongly recommend) and having corresponded with him for his opinion and thoughts in my own research, I can assure the reader that Watson has a significant knowledge of the history and current thought on the subject of the Loch Ness Monster (LNM) and other unidentified aquatic megafauna of the area. I would suggest this paper would benefit, and the proposals strengthened, with a greater and more consistent application and methodology (Heuvelmans, 1988) and a greater effort towards explanations of any imbalance.

The present paper concerns the Wittgenstein ontology project: an attempt to create a Semantic Web representation of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy. The project has been in development since 2006, and its current state enables users to search for information about Wittgenstein-related documents and the documents themselves. However, the developers have much more ambitious goals: they attempt to provide a philosophical subject matter knowledge base that would comprise the claims and concepts formulated by the philosopher. The current knowledge representation technology is not well-suited for this task, and a non-standard approach is required. The creators of the Wittgenstein ontology project are aware of this fact; recently, they have been discussing conceptual devices adjusting the technology to their needs. The main goal of this paper is to present examples of a representation of philosophical content that make use of both the devices already proposed and some new inventions. The represented content comes from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; more specifically, its theses concerning the problems in philosophy of mathematics.

The functions of new metaphors in early tantric Buddhism are analysed in the paper. Two models of religious practice are concerned. According to both of them, the goal of tantric practice is permanent modification of the practitioner’s cognitive activity. That modification can be understood as willingness to implement particular metaphors spontaneously into the process of perceptive data interpretation. Those metaphorical concepts are closely related to the conception of Buddha nature. Religious practice of Vajrayâna can be seen as striving for experiential substantiation for the main of those metaphors (mind is mandala). Special act of visualization in ritual context is expected to be such substantiation. Six types of metaphors important in the soteriology of the early Vajrayâna can be distinguished. All of them are discussed in the paper.

The present paper argues that libertarians (e.g. Murray Rothbard, Stephan Kinsella) who subscribe the proportionality principle while embracing the view that to have a right to property is to have a right to defend it run into what we call the Property Defense Dilemma. For if the only way to defend property is to defend it disproportionately, then a private property right – contrary to what these thinkers claim – is not accompanied by a right to defend it. The most plausible way out of the dilemma – the present paper argues – is to conceive of private property rights as only weakly absolute, to use Matthew H. Kramer’s illuminating distinction. On the other hand, libertarians who as Walter Block would like to escape the dilemma by replacing the proportionality standard with the gentleness principle run into other sorts of problems (moral implausibility, incoherence) which also shows that it is the libertarian view on rights as infinitely stringent side constraints that calls for revision and attenuation.

This paper, written at the invitation of Giuliano Crifò (1934-2011), former extraordinary Assistant of Emilio Betti (1957-1960), and President of the Emilio Betti Institute at La Sapienza in Rome since 1987, presents Giovanni Battista Vico as the founder of the veritative hermeneutics in the modern age. His vision of the hermeneutics of history, based on the verum ipsum factum and on the perspective of the meta-historical dimension of Providence, lies far from the Hegelian immanentist declinations. The, the paper compares Vico's perspective with the canons of veritative hermeneutics of the jurist Emilio Betti, a great representative of the hermeneutic debate of the twentieth century. Betti links hermeneutics to the question of truth, the primary object of hermeneutics itself. In the debate of the twentieth century, Betti is one of the greatest defenders of Vico's intuition. Vico’s and Betti’s hermeneutic account can help us confront the weak thinking in the contemporary philosophical context.

The paper aims to reevaluate the Kierkegaardian reception of the Platonic work, a reevaluation based on the question pertinent to the use of the myth. Although Kierkegaard presents several criticisms and reservations to Plato, his considerations about the use of myth in relation to the dialectical limits of thought allowed the Danish philosopher to develop an argumentative technique that served his claim to overcome the limits of understanding imposed by the dialectical reason from post-Kantian philosophy. Based on the concept of metaphor, the paper starts from the Kierkegaardian analysis of the Platonic use of myth. The paper advances to an analysis of the relationship between myth and dialectic in Platonic texts and finally develops a reflection on the way in which Kierkegaard appropriated the Platonic teaching in the development of his own reflections, with emphasis on the presence in works where the authors were pseudonyms.

The division of the problems about Meaning in an extensional and an intensional theory was accused of unnecessarily duplicating the theoretical problems involved in the knowledge of Meaning. The result was either 1. an aggressive rejection of the intensional part of the problem or 2. the adoption of non-classical semantics to account for intensions. This paper suggests a reading of Frege's theory of Meaning that preserves the contribution of the intensional aspect of the question without sacrificing the benefits of the classical insights. For this, however, we need to expand his theory to cases of semantic values which are not directly assertive, that is, what Micheal Dummett called ingredient value. This solution preserves the direct and intuitive insights of classical semantics, expanding it to cases where the designation of truth or falsehood does not have a unified interpretation: speculative, modal, ambiguous, relative cases or cases in which theories disputing Meaning is not straightforwardly mapped to the truth or the not-truth. The paper is a contribution to support the pragmatic interpretation of Frege's legacy by Micheal Dummett.

This paper explores the interconnections between philosophical wisdom and bioethical expertise, arguing that the latter can be enlightened by the former. First, it analyses the arguments of those who think that philosophy has nothing to say to bioethics, and afterwards, it shows that philosophical wisdom has an irreducible ethical component, which in turn helps bioethics to reach its aims. Thus, this paper shows that some Wittgensteinian commentators (e.g., Paul Johnston) did not grasp the contributions the author of the Tractatus Logico-philosophicus and even his later work made to ethics (and potentially to bioethics as a subfield) as an autonomous domain of investigation independent of logic, the empirical sciences, and metaphysics.

This paper concerns the question of what it is that philosophers have been talking about, or ought to have been talking about, when they talk about ‘a practice’. This issue is complicated by the fact that, in English at least, there are several rather distinct senses of the word ‘practice’, in two of which ‘practice’ is used as a noun, and another two senses in which ‘practice’ is used as a verb. And all of these uses, both nominal and verbal, are actually quite distinct from, but clearly related to, what philosophers have been interested in when they discuss ‘a practice’. In Two Concepts of Rules John Rawls offered a definition of ‘practice’ that has been influential on later philosophical discussions of what it is to be a practice: «I use the word ‘practice’ throughout as a sort of technical term meaning any form of activity specified by a system of rules which defines offices, roles, moves, penalties, defenses, and so on, and which gives the activity its structure. As examples one may think of games and rituals, trials and parliaments». It is a central thesis of Two Concepts of Rules that consequentialist and deontic rules, (or norms), are both essentially involved in the institution and evaluation of practices. It is the thesis of this present paper, however, that if one focuses on the process of practicing a practice in order to develop and maintain the ability to successfully occupy an office in a Rawlsian practice, one can see that Rawls both misidentified the character of those norms and mislocated their targets

Let me begin by thanking Jim Tucker for offering his thoughts on my JSE paper on the James Leininger case (Sudduth 2021). I appreciate his clarifying his interpretation of several of the facts in the case, as well as his providing further context to some of them. I also appreciate his acknowledgement of Bruce Leininger’s authorship of the 2003 chronology which I uncovered in my investigation and made use of in my paper. That’s all helpful. For the rest, I wish I could say what St. Augustine said to Evodius when responding to the latter’s criticisms – “you have knocked vigorously.” Alas, I cannot say this about Tucker’s response. My paper developed a number of different concerns about the evidential value of the James Leininger case (hereafter, JL case). The paper was lengthy and the scope of the material I presented was broad, often involving considerable detail regarding different aspects of the case. I realize this can make writing a concise and salient response a daunting task. To effectively navigate the landscape, therefore, it’s crucial to properly understand the structure and content of my arguments, as well as how I intend to leverage various facts in the service of specific lines of argument. One must not miss the forest (the argument) for the trees (particular facts). Or, in the words of St. Augustine, one must knock vigorously. Tucker has not.

This paper follows Ricoeur’s trajectory and strategy of thought in his final works, bringing into discussion aspects of Sen’s texts and relevant commentary by other scholars. The main result of this paper is to offer an alternative reading compared to the literature, highlighting how Ricoeur is indebted to Sen but also considering how the two differ in order to reach a more equilibrate view of their “dialogue”. Among their analogies, Ricoeur explicitly recognized Sen’s influence in his transition from self-recognition to mutual recognition and they assigned the same value to capabilities. But their respective understanding of mutuality among human agents is the main difference between them. Ricoeur wants to create authentical space and real opportunity for mutual understanding where rights and capabilities might be finally conciliated. In contrast, Sen is still enough weary and hesitant to commit to what he would consider an ideal aim of human discourse and interaction.

The aim of the present paper is to follow the reasons for which Heidegger, in his lectures from 1929/30 The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (world – finitude – solitude) repeats the project of Being and Time of an analysis of the human existence and of a description of his existential crises as central for the possibilities of a historical mobilization of the world now no longer from a simply ontological mood, but rather from a so called factical mood, i.e., a mood that possesses a structural connection with our historical world. From that, the paper analyses the figures of boredom going through the most superficial one to the deep boredom, while also exposing what once more hinders Heidegger’s attempt to think in a consistent way about the fundamental event of singularization as a key path into the temporality of Being as such, which implies a new failure of the project of fundamental ontology in its essential liaison with existential analytics.

This paper is an introduction to Domenico Jervolino’s Discurso Filosófico e Existência em Ricoeur: Filosofar após Kierkegaard that we have translated to Portuguese. The paper is divided into three main sections: firstly, we reflect upon the reception of Paul Ricoeur's thought in Brazil, especially with the translation by/interpretation of Hilton Japiassu; secondly, we analyze some aspects of Domenico Jervolino's work and the interpretive horizon that it left for the reflection upon of Ricoeurian thought; finally, we seek to think about the place that Discurso Filosófico e Existência em Ricoeur: Filosofar após Kierkegaard occupies in Jervolino's work and in the context of Brazilian tradition on Ricoeur's thought.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the concept of the interdisciplinary problem using the categories of the logic of questions. The problem is seen in a logical and epistemic sense: the problem is a meaning of the question, and the question is a formulation of the problem in a particular language. Demonstrating that the interdisciplinarity of an interdisciplinary problem is understood in terms of a particular kind of complexity, I indicate the places where it is realized in the structure of the problem-question, in the problem’s solution-answer to the question, and in the cognitive context of the problem solving - answering to the question. The paper also displays how an interdisciplinary problem is situated within the broader structure of an interdisciplinary research process. Thus, the paper provides not only a metatheoretical characterization of the interdisciplinary problem but also a general methodological tool for analyzing particular interdisciplinary problems.

The purpose of the presented paper is to showcase the links between Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s libertarian argumentation ethics and Karl-Otto Apel’s transcendental pragmatics with a special reference to the consensus theory of truth proposed by the latter thinker. More specifically, the author contends that Hoppe’s theory is logically contingent on Apel’s views on truth in that some crucial gaps in Hoppe’s grounding of the so-called “a priori of communication and argumentation” are filled by Apel’s original arguments. Additionally, the paper provides a case for interpreting Hoppe's ethics as a theory of rational conflict-freedom, which seems to cohere best with the transcendental-pragmatist approach. Finally, the author offers a few remarks on how the most common objections against Hoppe's theory can be overcome on the basis of the transcendental pragmatics and the conflict-freedom principle.

The paper revises the idea of speech as a fundamental political faculty in response to the challenges of the Anthropocene. First, it is argued that, rather than as a subsystem of language, speech should be conceptualised as the expression of the embodied capacity of voice (in this respect, the paper follows Adriana Cavarero’s [2005] argument). Secondly, vocality is linked to the faculty of taste (understood as in Arendt’s reading of Kant) to locate politics in the broader order of materiality (physis).

The paper analyses the concept of equality in theoretical, philosophical, and practical context, as it appears in the programs of the Polish political parties. Inquiries regard the concept of equality for the LGBTQ community (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) in the context of human rights. The concept of human rights is discussed within the vertical and horizontal approach. The following questions are addressed: How do political parties relate to the concept of equality? Does equality appear in the political programs, and if it does, then in relation to which social groups? Do political parties engage in the problem of equality with regard to the LGBTQ community? The aim of the paper is to indicate significant differences in this respect between political parties.

Permanent orientation assumes a central role in the whole course of human existence. It is the goal to which the whole of society should strive: orient to be oriented. In this paper, critical issues arising from the atavistic problem of confusing the ends and means of education are highlighted. Through the investigation of some distortions concerning the educational system, the inability in the resolution of school dropout and inequality is revealed. The problem of orientation as a mere means of information close to moments of transition, together with the misrepresentation of orientation in the economy and the labor market, reveals the importance of orientation as a lifelong educational process. The fundamental role of teachers/orientators emerges in the analysis of some of the European and Italian policies and regulations on orientation. Finally, the role of pedagogues as apex figures in education and as a driving force for social and human progress globally is highlighted.

In this paper I have tried to highlight how, from the outset, the Montessorian pedagogy is not so much an alternative way of teaching, as a scientifically elaborated instrument to re-establish the physiological balance of the person in order to develop inner human qualities and abilities from the very beginning of existence. We can regard her pedagogy as the foundation for a new humanism, aimed at the evolution of mankind. I was inspired by this pedagogy in the training work I conducted in Cameroon, Armenia, Bosnia and Rwanda, after discovering the Montessori method at the Tibetan Children’s Village in Dharamsala, the shelter for refugee minors in India, conceived and wanted by the Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

In this paper, following Rahel Jaeggi’s critique of forms of life, I contend that to identify genuine critical thinking we should start from an analysis of the normative nature of forms of life as the basic constituents of the social world. In this view, critical thinking can be seen as a critical behaviour. While genuine forms of life can recognize and consider the variety of concrete and diverse situations, on the contrary non-functioning forms of life’s critical rationality understands the norm as applied from outside of the form of life. In this case the norm, erroneously understood as a neutral and universally applicable principle, such as economic rationality, is not able to consider the particularity of forms of life as goods in themselves. I defend the meaning that an education in critical thinking must have, as a genuine and functional rationality characterising human beings in a social world.

This article consists of three parts, excluding the Introduction and the Conclusion. The first part “What is it ‘to wait’?” is a lexicographical study on the word ‘waiting’, in various Indo-European languages. This lexicographical adventure that passes through some dense foliage will not only clarify the different connotations in the phenomenon of waiting, but will also lead us to the second part of the paper – “Waiting and Time Consciousness”. Here, the art of waiting is examined through the looking glass of Time as understood by the philosophers Henri Bergson, Edmund Husserl, Hannah Arendt, and Martin Heidegger. The questions of how we wait and why we wait are addressed in this section. The third part looks at the presence-absence of the waiting spirit in the post-truth era that we are living in. Titled, “We, the Hollow People”, this section highlights what happens to us when we forget to wait, forget to stand and gaze. The Concluding part “Waiting for God Who Awaits Us” speaks of Christians as “waiters”, waiting with and for God, the other, and also on oneself, not on lofty mountain peaks, but right down on the “bathroom floor”.

To date, Hessdalen lights (HLs) are misunderstood; nevertheless, these phenomena are surprisingly ignored by most of the scientific community. However, a few researchers, such as Erling Strand and Massimo Teodorani, have paved the right path by showing that experimental methods of physics can be applied to study HLs. Additionally, we believe that matter cannot simply be brushed aside and that it deserves a serious examination. Recently, we proposed a possible origin of HLs (Pascoli, 2021). The basic idea—a micrometric wormhole manifestation—is promoted here, and we suggest that the Hessdalen-type lights, seen pretty much everywhere in the world, may eventually be interpreted as a symptom of an unsuspected phenomenon deep in the subsoil of the considered site. The idea of a geological origin for the Hessdalen lights has already been proposed (Teodorani, 2004, 2014); however, this interesting suggestion is being reconsidered from an entirely new perspective. The present paper has to be seen as a working hypothesis, in which the main interests are to foster thinking on underlying physics and to suggest a full series of experiments that can be performed on these very enigmatic Hessdalen lights. Regardless of the strength of a hypothesis, the experiment is the final arbiter in science.

This article complements those published in the special issue of this Journal (Summer 2023) about the Shakespeare Authorship Question. After making some important points about why William Shakespeare could not have written the works attributed to him, the present paper argues the case for Sir Henry Neville (1563–1615) as the real author. Of particular interest is the fact that Neville’s handwriting, in letters and in annotations in books, appears to be identical with the handwriting in “Hand D” of the play Sir Thomas More, the only manuscript source believed to be in the handwriting of “William Shakespeare”. Twelve key points are then advanced as to why Neville was the real author of Shakespeare’s works.

Near-death experiences (NDEs) cannot be defined merely as a collection of phenomenal features. An accurate definition needs to describe what NDEs essentially are, that is, what lies behind the phenomenal features. The definition would describe what happens in the experience to account for the different features; this can only be fully described in the context of an underlying theoretical framework. In this paper, we propose the mind entity framework, which holds that a human being is a nonmaterial mind united with the physical body. In an NDE, the mind, or seat of consciousness, separates from the body and operates independently of it until the mind returns to and reunites with the body. From this framework, we identified the nine NDE features from the 16 features of the NDE Scale (Greyson, 1983) that specifically imply the separation of the mind from the body. The five most prevalent of these “separation” features accounted for 98.8% of NDEs in a sample of NDE accounts in the IANDS Experience Registry (N=565). The prevalence of these five “essential” NDE features was repeated in three other large NDE datasets published in the last 20 years. Therefore, an NDE can be defined as a profound subjective experience caused by a person’s consciousness separating from their physical body.

The Hessdalen lights (HLs in the following) are luminous, floating, more or less spherical atmospheric phenomena, with a lifetime of a few seconds to sometimes several minutes. These phenomena are seen in the Hessdalen Valley in Norway for decades. Unfortunately a full understanding of these baffling events is still lacking in spite of solid working scientific projects intended to explain them. This paper tries to improve the situation. It raises the questions where the energy for the creation of the HLs comes from, and what was its nature : (geo) chemical, electric or still other ? We propose a new scenario for the Hessdalen lights. It exploits the recent idea of stable and traversable wormholes whose the potential existence is beginning to be recognized in physics. Even though appearing highly speculative, this hypothesis has not been so far explored elsewhere while it could supply a full description of the wholeness of the phenomenon. On the other side even if the probability that a HL could indeed be a wormhole is may be low, this question should not dismissed out of hand. These theoretical considerations could help to increase knowledge and understanding of both the HLs and the wormholes, drawing mutual enrichment. In other words HLs could betray the presence of hidden wormholes and we must not let slip through our fingers this possibility even if it is very tiny. In this framework we discuss of the stability, the energetics and the oversized dimension of the HLs. In physics the final arbiter is not the theory but the experiment. Thus some “simple” experiments are eventually suggested (high time resolution photometry and magnetic field measurements). Eventually, if the process described is real and after mastering it, there is a free and inexhaustible source of energy that would be derived, a tremendous breakthrough after which we could forget the controlled nuclear fusion. Regarding its structure, the paper is divided in four paragraphs 1, 2,3, 4 independent of each other. Illustrative pictures help to understand the text.

This paper reports a preliminary survey of one of humanity's most historic harbors--Alexandria, Egypt. It constitutes one phase of a broader joint land/sea examination of the largest and most famous city to bear Alexander the Great's name. The research overall had two goals: 1) to resolve locational uncertainties concerning the city's past configuration, particularly its Ptolemaic antecedents; and 2) to compare electronic remote sensing survey technologies with Remote Viewing generally, and the applications methodology developed by the Mobius Groups specifically. In the area of the Eastern Harbor, the aim of the research was: 1) the location of the ancient shore line; the locaton of and predictive description of several sites including the island of Antirrhodus and the Emporium/Poseidium/Timonium complex; a palace complex associated with Cleopatra; and a further elaboration, both in terms of location and predictive description, of the Pharos lighthouse area; 2) a comparison of Remote Viewing and side scan sonar data after each approach had surveyed the same area. This paper describes the probable location of the Emporium, the Poseidium, and the Timonium, the palace complex of Cleopatra, the island of Antirrhodus, a site at the tip of Fort Sisila (known prevously as Point Lochias), new discoveries pertaining to the lighthouse, andd an associated temple. The most important discovery though is the identification and location of the ancient seawall which extends some 65 meters farther out into the harbor than was previously suspected, and whoe location resolves a key piece in the puzzle of the ancient city's layout. The discoveries reported here were principally the result of Remote Viewing. Except for one clear "hit," side scan sonar proved unproductive because of the large amount of particulate in the water.

Michael Nahm’s report in this issue of the JSE deftly presents many of the scholarly offenses perpetrated by Alejandro Parra. Some of those not mentioned had to do with Parra’s submissions to the JSE, and I feel it’s important to add those to the record. JSE published a retraction notice earlier this year (Volume 35, Issue 1) and provided examples of Parra’s plagiarism. Moreover, the Journal rejected another paper in which we found substantial plagiarism. But Parra’s boldest effort was his submission, under his own name, of a paper by an Argentinian author, Anna Conforte—in fact, a paper Parra published in his own newsletter. But Parra never indicated that the paper was written by someone else. Several people independently and carefully compared the English submission to the original Spanish. All agreed that Parra apparently simply auto-translated the paper to clumsy English and presented it as his own work.

This paper hypothesis is that despite Heidegger’s acknowledgment on the relevance of intentionality, he subordinates it to the notion of transcendence, while displacing its justification to the formal-transcendental ontological realm. Considering this, I investigate the scope of a more radical intentionality, as announced by Heidegger, inasmuch as he situates it in the structure of being-ahead-of-itself-in-already-being-involved-in. The paper concludes with an analysis of transcendence and intentionality from the vantage point of foundation and dependence relations.

In Nascimento (2015) I criticized the thesis defended in Irwin (1983) according to which two of the most famous characters in Euripides’ plays. In that article, I’ve pointed out several weakness in these thesis in order to justify my disagreement. I also suggested that, although there was no reason why we should stop looking for examples and explanations of akratic behavior in Euripides’ plays, that should not be the only kind of irrational behavior we ought to be interested in finding there. In this paper, I argue that Medea actually instantiates a form of irrational behavior that is different from akratic behavior. The argument that follows is divided in four parts. After a brief introduction (section I), I clarify what sort of irrationality I believe to be instantiated by Medea’s behavior using Michael Bratman’s theory of plan stability (section II). Then, I analyze Euripides’ text in order to show why I think we should say that Medea does display that kind of irrationality (section III). The paper concludes with a brief summary of the argument (section IV). --- Original in English.

This issue of the JSE includes a retraction of a paper by Alejandro Parra that we published in 2017. As far as I can determine, it’s the journal’s first official retraction of a published paper. The reason for this action is the author’s extensive plagiarism, both in that paper and in other published work (including a recent book whose publisher has since recalled all copies). It’s a sad state of affairs, of course—and perhaps the first of its kind in this particular and admittedly minor scientific domain. But it reminds me that six years ago, in Volume 29(2), we published a paper on retractions in science, and in that issue I seized the opportunity to editorialize further on the subject. I recycle that Editorial below. But before that, I must note that careful examination has found no additional evidence of plagiarism in the one other research article (in 2018) and the one book review we’ve published by Parra. I must also mention that, henceforth, the JSE will run routine plagiarism tests on papers accepted for publication. I thought this was a chore I’d left behind when I retired from teaching. However, I don’t want the JSE to emulate the person who said “I’ve learned from my mistakes, and I’m certain I can repeat them exactly.” EDITORIAL FROM JSE VOLUME 29(2), 189–192

I read with great interest the paper by Peter Sturrock and Kathleen Erickson (Sturrock & Erickson, 2020) on the Dedication in Shakespeare’s Sonnets. I am neither a scholar of literature, nor of Shakespeare, and I do not want to enter the fray as to who was the author of Shakespeare’s sonnets and plays. But I must confess that I found the arguments presented by Sturrock and Erickson intriguing. It is in that vein I would like to communicate an interesting finding. On page 302, Figure 21, of their paper, they present the Dedication of the Sonnets as a grid of 12 x 12 letters. This was done under the assumption that cryptograms can be deciphered better if they are laid out in a certain format. They then present the message they assume is contained there: “PRO PARE VOTIS EMERITER” as a devotion of Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford to his supposed friend, the Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley. I find this a possible meaning. My experience with Latin texts – based on a translation of a medieval mystical writer from Latin into German and the reading of many original Latin texts, mainly from the middle ages and beyond (Hugo de Balma, 2017; Walach, 1994, 2010) – let another sequence jump out at me: SI PATET PRO MIRE VERO RETIRO The translation would read: "If it becomes miraculously obvious [who I am], I retire." That this is a reference of the proposed author, Edward de Vere, to himself would become clear from the double use of “vero”.

The paper explores the relation between collective memory and social theory, trying in particular to show the key role that the notion of collective memory plays in understanding the dynamics of the social process (structuration, genesis of social structure). It does it by means of a series of reinterpretations of classical authors. Investigating the phenomenon of forgetting as covering up the traces of social change (M. Halbwachs), problematized in the contemporary context (P. Bourdieu), leads us to unraveling the problematic character of social change as such in a vain effort of annulment of memory (A. Touraine), and finally to rediscovering of social memory at a deeper level, as a profound structure of social processes. This discovery points to the necessity of introducing a new, yet undeveloped method of studying the social unconscious (A. Giddens, J. Assmann, and in particular J. Alexander). Jeffrey Alexander overtly postulates such a development, identifying his major project of cultural sociology with a kind of social psychoanalysis. The paper ends with a question – where such a postulate leads us to? Perhaps we need a new kind of art of benevolent interpretation that brings along with new understanding also some kind of soothing the pain of misery, deeply inscribed in social existence.

Congenital aphantasia, or the complete absence of mental imagery, is a topic that has recently aroused the interest of researchers in many fields including philosophy, psychology and cognitive sciences. While it is generally supposed that we all have rich mental lives full of imaged representations, estimates suggest 2-3% of the population may have never formed an image or seen ‘in the mind’s eye.’ This paper aims to address the scepticism surrounding aphantasia, the challenges in communicating about mental imagery, and the research methods used in cognitive sciences today through the lens of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. The paper argues that 1) communicating about mental imagery involves language games that persons with aphantasia may not be able to play (i.e., makes reference to expressions and concepts that are meaningless for them, such as ‘visualise,’ ‘form an image,’ etc.); 2) that as a consequence aphantasia, in present research, is only describable negatively (as lack or incapacity); 3) that rather than a cognitive or a psychological issue, aphantasia should be understood as a grammatical one; and 4) that we need to invent new language games in order to come to a better understanding of conditions such as aphantasia, and to be able to appreciate the rich diversity and variability of human experience.

The article analyses the concept of posthuman from a philosophical perspective. The paper aims to present and determine the meaning of the notion of posthuman. The considerations are based on the assumption that posthumanist philosophy can be distinguished within posthumanism. The subject matter of posthumanist philosophy is human being and human situation in the changing world due to the development of science and technology. The starting point for the analysis is the posthumanist postulate of ‘working-through’ the humanist tradition, which results in a non-essentialist and non-anthropocentric concept of posthuman. The article presents the process of shaping this concept in reference to works of D. Haraway and N.K. Hayles. Then the paper analyses the standpoint of R. Braidotti in order to show that posthumanism was inspired by feminism and deconstructivism (these inspirations had a significant impact on the vision of posthumanity). The characteristics of posthuman are presented in reference to Braidotti’s conception of relational subjectivity. The article elucidates why the posthuman subject is materialistically embedded in order to explain the thesis about significant role of human embodiment. The paper shows how the abolition of the opposition between body and thinking leads to a post-dualistic conception of human being.

The paper aims to analyse the role of Entfremdung in the process of self-awareness. In the Anmerkungen zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität of 1920, Husserl reflects on the Entfremdung of the concrete bodily self, using the alterity or the meeting with the extraneous as a model. The conscious relation of the natural self to its soma (das Physische) is constituted in the context of the experience of the extraneous (das Fremde). The reference to the other than oneself also seems to occur in the transcendental self-reflection of the self, investigated in the late manuscripts on temporality (C- Manuscripts). Firstly, in such manuscripts, the living present (lebendige Gegenwart) is both identity and difference from self, and precisely as a continuous transition from identity to other-than-self, to difference from self, it constitutes the original ground of the transcendental ego. Secondly, it is possible to grasp a correlativity: that between the bodily self-reflection and the temporal self-reflection of the transcendental ego. Both are based on the opposition and mediation of subjective and objective. Following this path, it can be said that in the reflections on original temporality, the dynamics of bodily self-reflection are iterated: it is no coincidence that in the C Manuscripts Husserl designates the temporal Ego objectified in self-reflection as Non-Ego. Even in the case of the original temporal self-reflexivity, it is otherness that mediates the relation to the self, an otherness that is not identified with but connected to the transcendental body of others.

In recent decades, phenomenology and hermeneutical phenomenology have taken the lead in addressing the question of personal identity through the inquiry of “who are you?”. However, this lead has questionable aspects in capturing the relationality between self, others, and the surrounding world, characterized by its ever-changing state. To understand personal identity in its ever-changing state of becoming, the primary focus of this paper is twofold: firstly, exploring how to reconcile these complex relations into a unified conception of personal identity by following Husserl’s notion of “indeterminate determinacy” and his theory of variation, and secondly, considering the limitations of defining this unity as an “autobiography or biography" in accordance with Arendt’s notion of a "life-story". In the final analyses the notion of life-story will be revised together with Waldenfels’s analyses on “radical alien” and Sözer’s “in-between”. This will prompt a reconsideration of personal identity as a process, leading to a genetic phenomenological perspective that recognizes the “indeterminacy of the self”.