Famous Objects Research Articles

Predication and Modality in Kant’s Critique of the Ontological Argument

Abstract There is perhaps no more famous objection to the Ontological Argument (OA) than Kant’s contention that existence is not a predicate (E~P). However, this is not his only objection against the Ontological Argument. It is rather part of a more comprehensive attack on the OA, one that contains at least four distinct arguments, only one of which involves (E~P). It is the purpose of this paper to explore Kant’s case for (E~P), consider three contemporary strategies used to reinforce it, assess their merits, and then finally briefly present Kant’s three further arguments

‘Intimations of immortality’: a response to Bernard Williams

AbstractIn this article, I address Bernard Williams's famous objection to immortality. Following others, I conceive of Williams's argument as presenting a dilemma for those who hope in immortality. The first lemma involves utter boredom, while the second lemma involves loss of one's distinctive character. I argue that each lemma fails to admit realistic alternative possibilities. The first fails to admit the possibility that our disposition to boredom is a radically contingent disposition. The second fails to admit the possibility that we retain some of our most important desires and projects in immortality – even while cycling through an array of desires and projects.

ONLINE TRAVEL AGENTS USE FOR SALES AND PROMOTION OF HOTEL IN KALIURANG YOGYAKARTA

Although traditional travel agents have played an important role as proxies enabling travelers to make connections with hotels, the emergence of the internet has changed the traditional relationship between hotels and travel agents. Instead of a traditional agent–principal relationship, online travel agents (OTAs) seem to act as more than just intermediaries and more as business partners or vendors. Scholars have previously observed troubled, if not hostile, relationships between hotels and OTAs. There has been a growing tendency for hotel and accommodation business worldwide to use Online Travel Agents (OTAs) to promote and sell their rooms. This research discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the promotion and sales through OTAs for hotel business in Kaliurang a famous tourism destination object in Yogyakarta. The object of the research is the hotel manager, supervisors and staff who handle the hotel promotion and sales of their accommodation business. Hotel were located in Kaliurang chosen based on cluster proportional and the informants were chosen based on purposive sampling technique. The result shows that the disadvantages in using OTAs as promotion and sales tool are rising occupancy, direct payment, and as a tool in making hotel well known worldwide. The disadvantages are decrease net sales, over booking, negative comments could downgrade the hotels rank, and OTAs make hotels website got limited traffic. The motivation of hotel managements in using OTAs is highly motivated. The dominant factor of the perception included factors in self-perception of the target, factor in the self-perception., and factors perception of situation. This research suggests to the villa management to recruit special personnel for handling OTAs as well as to manage own websites to increase the net sales.
 Keywords: promotion, sales, hotel management, online travel agents

Agropolitan Development in Merapi Disaster Affected Areas

Magelang Regency is a strategic city in Central Java. The regency has famous tourist destination objects such as Borobudur Temple, besides the fertile climate and soil conditions are an invaluable asset to support agribusiness development. The position of the boundary line between the city area roomates becomes the product market and the village that the production buffer zone may be developed into a competitive Agropolitan region. The obstacles that arise are Magelang Regency is the affected area of Mount Merapi activity, in addition to causing fertility in agricultural land, and the tectonic earthquake eruption become obstacles to the development of potential areas of Merapi disaster, due to the high of physical hazards such as infrastructure damage. The direction of this paper is to look for potential Agropolitan location references with the guarantee of infrastructure service support, the disaster zone equality into a node that connects the area of agribusiness-producing regions in all regency in Magelang regency. The LQ and KS methods are used to bridge the analysis studies in this paper.

The Arguments of Aquinas: A Philosophical View by J. J. MacIntosh

Reviewed by: The Arguments of Aquinas: A Philosophical View by J. J. MacIntosh Brian Davies J. J. MacIntosh. The Arguments of Aquinas: A Philosophical View. New York: Routledge, 2017. Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion 14. Pp. xiv + 208. Cloth, $140.00. Aquinas never describes himself as a ‘philosopher.’ He typically uses that word when referring to such “pagans” as Aristotle. Yet he often presents what we can now view as purely philosophical arguments. And it is some of these with which MacIntosh is concerned in this fine new book, which is divided into three parts, as is Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae. MacIntosh has previously published two books on Robert Boyle (1627–1691), who features from time to time in the present volume. In part 1, “Natural Philosophy,” MacIntosh reports a number of things that Aquinas has to say about necessity and possibility, causality, time and motion, and time and infinity. Part 2, “Natural Theology,” deals with Aquinas under the headings “God’s existence,” “God’s attributes,” and “Foreknowledge and freedom.” Part 3, “Human Beings,” contains chapters titled “Epistemology and philosophy of mind,” “Souls and Immortality,” and “Morality and Method: Aquinas on lying and unnatural practices.” Part 1 is largely, though not exclusively, expository. In parts 2 and 3, which also contain a fair amount of exposition, MacIntosh seems more concerned to evaluate some of the arguments of Aquinas on which he reports. And he tends to evaluate them rather favorably, though he also raises objections to some of them. MacIntosh modestly tells us that he is not an Aquinas scholar. He describes himself as someone who admires Aquinas as a philosopher and who wishes to show contemporary philosophers unfamiliar with Aquinas that he is of philosophical importance (x). But MacIntosh clearly knows a lot about Aquinas, and his uniformly clear expositions display a serious grasp of Aquinas’s thinking. So, for instance, MacIntosh rightly notes how Aquinas, unlike Hume, takes cause and effect to be “two sides of the same coin” (34). He also well explains how causa, as Aquinas uses the word, might be best translated as ‘explanation’ (35–36). Again, MacIntosh is correct to say that “it is simultaneous causation that is primarily of interest to Thomas in the five ways” (41). I might add that I was particularly impressed by what MacIntosh says in chapter 4 concerning Aquinas on the eternity of the world. Contrary to some of his theological contemporaries, Aquinas argues that the universe could have existed without a beginning. A famous objection to this thesis holds that if the history of the world goes back to infinity, then the present could never have arrived. Yet MacIntosh neatly indicates the flaw in this objection while also noting how Aquinas put his finger on it. He also well explains how Aquinas’s view on the possibility of the universe’s never having begun to exist is compatible with what he says in Summa Theologiae, 1a,7 about the possibility of an actual infinite multitude. Some of MacIntosh’s expositions of Aquinas are brief, and, perhaps, too brief. For example, MacIntosh might have offered more than he does when turning to what he refers to as ‘God’s attributes.’ He provides two pages (101–2) on what Aquinas thought about God, univocity, and analogy. But he does not, I think, sufficiently clarify Aquinas’s claim that reflection on “God talk” needs to take account of res significata (thing signified) and modus significandi (way of signifying). Aquinas is clear that our talk of God always “signifies imperfectly” (see Summa Theologiae, 1a,13,4). Abstracting from what he says about metaphor, he also holds that our talk of God is always somehow equivocal. I suspect that readers of MacIntosh might fail to pick up on these important facts and their philosophical implications. [End Page 367] Again, consider what MacIntosh says about Aquinas on divine simplicity. In this he does not provide any systematic discussion of what Aquinas means when using the word esse. But if Aquinas is wrong on what he takes to be the distinction between essence (essentia) and existence (esse), then a lot that he says about God is also wrong. Yet readers of McIntosh...

Mill, rule-utilitarianism and „incoherence objection”

So-called ?incoherence objection? or ?rule-worship? objection is one of the most famous objections to ?rule-utilitarianism? approach to ethics. The author analyzes two indications present in current ethical literature: 1) that John Stuart Mill was aware of ?incoherence objection?; and 2) that some early critics of Mill?s Utilitarianism were founded on this objection. In the end, the author examines if John Rawls? distinction between ?summary? and ?practice? rules could resolve the issue posed by incoherence objection.

Fortune and Fairness in Global Economic Life

This paper develops John Rawls’s famous objection to the system of natural liberty as against the contemporary system of international trade. Even as “dynamic” policies have proven successful in several recent development success stories, the current system enforces a “static,” laissez-faire system of comparative advantage that threatens to consign poorly-endowed countries to a low-productivity, low-income destiny in agriculture and raw materials. I discuss two very different fairness arguments in favor of allowing and encouraging “dynamic,” pro-development polices: an argument from “structural equity” and an argument from “equity of fortune.” I suggest that the former is of more central importance, and that the difference between the two kinds of fairness argument shows why Rawls’s original objection to the (domestic) system of natural liberty does not imply “luck egalitarianism.”

The Problem of the Rock and the Grammar of Consciousness

Abstract The “Problem of the Rock” (PoR) is a famous objection to Higher-Order (HO) theories of consciousness. According to PoR, the HO theorists’ claim that a mental state is conscious iff there is a higher-order mental state about it implies that a rock is also conscious iff there is a higher-order mental state about it. In this paper I show that this argument confuses two grammatically distinct attributions of consciousness, and that if the consequent equivocation fallacy is avoided, PoR is either a straw man argument or has an unproblematic conclusion.

The Somoto Grand Canyon (Nicaragua)—a Volcanic Geoheritage Site One Decade After Discovery: from Field Geological Mapping to the Promotion of a Geopark

After its ‘discovery’ during field geological mapping by geologists of the Czech Geological Survey in 2004, the gorge of the Coco River in NW Nicaragua, now known as the Somoto Grand Canyon, has been turned into one of the most beautiful tourist attractions in Nicaragua. The canyon is developed in acid ignimbrites of Miocene age and is 3.5 km long and located between 13 and 14° N and 86–87° W, 12 km W of the town of Somoto. The gorge, which reaches a width of 4–10 m in its narrowest parts and a depth of up to 190 m, uncovers a range of unique pseudokarst features, such as giant erosion potholes and rock and sandy bars alternating with deep lakes. The Somoto Grand Canyon quickly became known to the public, and in 2006, it was declared a National Monument by law, and in 2007, a picture of the canyon appeared on the 50 cordobas banknote. The Somoto Grand Canyon is now considered as a famous object of geoheritage, belonging to one of the most famous sites in Nicaragua and there are aspirations that it could be included in the UNESCO Global Geopark Network, as the main geoheritage site of the planned Rio Coco Geopark.

Ogrody islamu na przykładzie założeń ogrodowych Andaluzji

Kultura południa Hiszpanii oparta została na zdobyczach cywilizacyjnych chrześcijan, wandalów i imperium muzułmańskiego. Stanowi ona przykład współistnienia różnych kultur i wierzeń. Okres jej największego rozwoju datowany jest na czas panowania kalifa Abd ar-Rahmana i jego następcy Hakma II, jednak najsłynniejsze obiekty, będące najlepiej zachowanymi przykładami architektury i sztuki ogrodowej Islamu, powstały w wieku XIV, kiedy to następował powolny upadek emiratu ze stolicą w Grenadzie. Wówczas wzniesione zostały takie zespoły pałacowo – parkowe jak Alhambra i letni pałac Generalife.
 Celem artykułu jest zaprezentowanie najważniejszych osiągnięć arabskiej sztuki ogrodowej południa Hiszpanii. Autorka omawia wybrane założenia ogrodowe Andaluzji opisując ich historię, kompozycję i zastosowaną roślinność ze szczególnym podkreśleniem jej symboliki.

Modal Truthmakers, Truth Conditions, and Analyses: or, How to Avoid the Humphrey Objection

Truthmakers, truth conditions, and analyses are closely related, but distinct in rather important ways. A failure to properly appreciate their differences has led to some confusion regarding the role that possible worlds ought to play with respect to modality. Those philosophers who initially proposed the existence of possible worlds were understood as providing an analysis of modality. More recently, many have interpreted them as providing modal truthmakers. But, possible worlds are (at best) only suited to serve as truth conditions for modal truths (or so I will argue). My goals are as follows: First, to dispel this confusion by detailing the differences between these three concepts. Second, to apply the lesson learned to the famous Humphrey objection against possible worlds. While this objection, if successful, does undermine Lewisian modal realism, it only partially undermines ersatzism, and leaves available a route by which ersatzers may avoid the objection altogether.

行為の反因果説の復興

The aim of this paper is to argue for the anti-causal theory of action by associating separate ideas of action with one another: the logical connection argument, the anti-psychologism of reason, teleology, the disjunctivism of intention and the disjunctivism of bodily movement. I will also defend the anti-causal theory from the famous objection called “Davidsonʼs challenge” and reveal that the fundamental idea of the anti-causal theory is that an intention to act and the action itself do not exist independently of each other.

Kant's Argument that Existence is not a Determination

In this paper, I examine Kant's famous objection to the ontological argument: existence is not a determination. Previous commentators have not adequately explained what this claim means, how it undermines the ontological argument, or how Kant argues for it. I argue that the claim that existence is not a determination means that it is not possible for there to be non‐existent objects; necessarily, there are only existent objects. I argue further that Kant's target is not merely ontological arguments as such but the larger ‘ontotheist’ metaphysics they presuppose: the view that God necessarily exists in virtue of his essence being contained in, or logically entailed by, his essence. I show that the ontotheist explanation of divine necessity requires the assumption that existence is a determination, and I show that Descartes and Leibniz are implicitly committed to this in their published versions of the ontological argument. I consider the philosophical motivations for the claim that existence is a determination and then I examine Kant's arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason against it.

Kant's Neglected Objection to the Ontological Argument

This paper argues that Kant’s most famous objection to the ontological argument – that existence is not a real predicate – is not, in fact, his most effective objection, and that his ‘neglected objection’ to the argument deserves to be better known. It shows that Kant clearly anticipates William Rowe’s later objection that the argument begs the question, and discusses why Kant himself seems to have overlooked the force of this criticism in his attempt to demolish the traditional proofs for God’s existence.

MAPPING THE UNDISCOVERED OBJECTS AND SITES IN LITHUANIA

Forlorn, uncared-for cultural or natural objects and sites fail to be included into lists of touristic attractions due to their obscurity, poor condition and communication and are usually visited by certain social groups (extreme adventure travellers, members of various subcultures and etc.). The analysis revealed a wide array of such objects and sites, which are unknown and not in very good condition, can be very different starting with manor houses, historic parks and gardens and finishing with airfields, open courses or dumping grounds. The goal of a pilot research project carried out at the National Centre of Remote Sensing and Geoinformatics “GIS-Centras” was to collect information on diverse objects and sites that are typically not included into official information sources and fall outside the tourist infrastructure network. The collected information will be published as a map service. The inventory of such undiscovered objects and sites and visualisation is one of the ways to encourage the interest of visitors, especially in regions that lack famous tourist attraction objects or beautiful landscapes. The paper describes solutions for the structure of the database, object acquisition technology, cartographic visualisation and publication of collected data as an online map at www.nemasinis.lt ...

Herschelfar-infrared observations of the Carina Nebula complex

The Carina Nebula represents one of the largest and most active star forming regions known in our Galaxy with numerous very massive stars.Our recently obtained Herschel PACS & SPIRE far-infrared maps cover the full area (about 8.7 deg^2) of the Carina Nebula complex and reveal the population of deeply embedded young stellar objects, most of which are not yet visible in the mid- or near-infrared.We study the properties of the 642 objects that are independently detected as point-like sources in at least two of the five Herschel bands.For those objects that can be identified with apparently single Spitzer counterparts, we use radiative transfer models to derive information about the basic stellar and circumstellar parameters.We find that about 75% of the Herschel-detected YSOs are Class 0 protostars.The luminosities of the Herschel-detected YSOs with SED fits are restricted to values of <=5400 Lsun, their masses (estimated from the radiative transfer modeling) range from about 1 Msun to 10 Msun.Taking the observational limits into account and extrapolating the observed number of Herschel-detected protostars over the IMF suggest that the star formation rate of the CNC is about 0.017 Msun/yr.The spatial distribution of the Herschel YSO candidates is highly inhomogeneous and does not follow the distribution of cloud mass.Most Herschel YSO candidates are found at the irradiated edges of clouds and pillars.This provides support to the picture that the formation of this latest stellar generation is triggered by the advancing ionization fronts.The currently ongoing star formation process forms only low-mass and intermediate-mass stars, but no massive stars.The far-infrared fluxes of the famous object EtaCar are about a factor of two lower than expected from observations with the ISO obtained 15 years ago; this may be due to dynamical changes in the circumstellar dust in the Homunculus Nebula.

The sense of diachronic personal identity

In this paper, I first consider a famous objection that the standard interpretation of the Lockean account of diachronicity (i.e., one’s sense of personal identity over time) via psychological connectedness falls prey to breaks in one’s personal narrative. I argue that recent case studies show that while this critique may hold with regard to some long-term autobiographical self-knowledge (e.g., episodic memory), it carries less warrant with respect to accounts based on trait-relevant, semantic self-knowledge. The second issue I address concerns the question of diachronicity from the vantage point that there are (at least) two aspects of self—the self of psycho-physical instantiation (what I term the epistemological self) and the self of first person subjectivity (what I term the ontological self; for discussion, see Klein SB, The self and its brain, Social Cognition, 30, 474–518, 2012). Each is held to be a necessary component of selfhood, and, in interaction, they are appear jointly sufficient for a synchronic sense of self (Klein SB, The self and its brain, Social Cognition, 30, 474–518, 2012). As pertains to diachronicity, by contrast, I contend that while the epistemological self, by itself, is precariously situated to do the work required by a coherent theory of personal identity across time, the ontological self may be better positioned to take up the challenge.

Too Much Fun: Shakespeare’s Entertainment Unconscious

Too Much Fun:Shakespeare’s Entertainment Unconscious Donald Hedrick My title, including the word “fun,” is willfully ahistorical in relation to Shakespeare, since Shakespeare never uses the word and since it is not even recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary until the late seventeenth century. But its significance and even its own history are pertinent here, for I intend to find in this concept, perhaps perversely attended to, what I term the “entertainment unconscious” of Shakespeare’s plays. This terrain registers the tectonic shift produced by the Elizabethan-Jacobean commercial theater and London’s entertainment industry, constituting what might be considered, moreover, as the entertainment revolution of the early modern era. “Play” is certainly a more academically respectable concept than “fun,” especially since it can trace an intellectual heritage that includes such prominent figures as Johan Huizinga and Mikhail Bakhtin. Whether we privilege Huizinga’s universalizing move in Homo Ludens to consider play as part or even the foundation of human nature, or the more historicized view by Bakhtin in The World of Rabelais of a localized social process of “carnival” that serves to “uncrown” sovereignty, authority, and hierarchy, play’s elasticity as a concept renders it a broad, research-generating paradigm across philosophy, literature, sociology, political theory, and history. “Fun,” by contrast, appears impossibly amorphous, untheorizable, and simple. An affect as well as an activity, the concept—if it is a “concept”—is at the same time stigmatized by readily tipping its hat in the direction of commercial culture and leisure. “Fun” is even more elastic as a reference than as a concept. It has become our [End Page 17] perennial value term: an individual’s judgment about what is “fun” is a common response from the earliest years of life onward, a chief marker of consumerist choice, adjusting every field and discipline, from journalism and politics to education. For all these reasons, and despite or because of its ubiquity, it would seem the shabbiest of candidate terms available for identifying cultural change and historical social formations, in the way that Raymond Williams famously did with other terms in his Keywords. Instead, it might loosely stand in for entertainment culture or the “culture industry” which was the Frankfurt School’s famous object of attack, for which Adorno and company are too often caricatured as basically anti-fun, although his rhetoric may often make the charge stick: “Fun is a medicinal bath. The pleasure industry never fails to prescribe it. It makes laughter the instrument of the fraud practiced on happiness” (Adorno and Horkheimer 39). Being against fun, if we could identify where this occurs, would perhaps be an even more fundamental prejudice than the “anti-theatrical prejudice” whose history Jonas Barish brilliantly catalogued. As if itself making similar theoretical talking points by illustration, a recent newspaper cartoon strip, cryptically titled “Fun Is Bad” (Griffith), is worthy of analysis for use in a present consideration of early modern, Shakespearean fun. Created by the cartoonist of “Zippy the Pinhead,” Bill Griffith, the strip calls comic attention both to the word and to its popular usage, in the exemplary postmodern fashion of this cartoonist. The visuals to this cartoon, not reproduced here, hardly help explicate the virtually incoherent exchange of two characters (the “pinhead” Zippy and his wife, Zerbina), the three frames of which follow here: “FUN IS BAD” Zippy the Pinhead, by Bill Griffith Kansas City Star, Preview, Thursday, June 2, 2011, p. 39. Zerbina: “Zippy, are we a FUN COUPLE? Because I really want us to be a FUN COUPLE … I want us to have a FUN COUPLE persona.” [End Page 18] Zippy: “We ARE a FUN COUPLE, Zerbina! I mean, is there a more FUNNER couple than us??” Zerbina: “I don’t know, Zippy. BOWLING without actually RELEASING th’ ball may not be considered a FUN COUPLE THING to do …” Zippy: “You want me to RELEASE th’ ball? … Because, I WILL if you want it!” Zippy: “… Oh, Zerbs … Let’s put aside this silly ARGUMENT … What do you say we TEAR UP th’ environment in this hot-wired DUNE BUGGY?” Zerbina: “You’re RIGHT! Let’s ditch FUN and go for LIFE-THREATENING!!” While the spoof on the trendiness...

Justifying and Criticizing the Removals of Antiquities in Ottoman Lands: Tracking the Sigeion Inscription

AbstractThis article attempts to widen the debate on the removal of antiquities from the Ottoman Empire around 1800. The removals are often seen in an Anglo-French perspective with the result that other voices are erased, both those of the local populations and of other foreign observers. I show that objects that now neglected were once highly valued by both local inhabitants and collectors, and that their removals were repeatedly resisted. I suggest that a more subtle interaction occurred between collectors and the local populations than hitherto has been recognized. While the local populations were accused of various “superstitious” practices—often conveniently related to objects coveted by European collectors—I propose that the removers were not uninfluenced by these practices. By introducing testimonies from Swedish observers that were critical of the removals before such critiques became frequent, I also question the stereotype of a common European attitude toward the Ottoman Empire. I discuss how such critique was related to their status as third-party observers from a nation without power or museums. By investigating the arguments of both collectors and critics, I propose that many positions in the debate today were already present at the time of the removals. Following the history of a less famous object serves to highlight aspects of early European collecting and expansion in the Eastern Mediterranean that are often overlooked in the debate on ownership and restitution claims.

The relevance of Kant's objection to Anselm's ontological argument

AbstractThe most famous objection to the ontological argument is given in Kant's dictum that existence is not a real predicate. But it is not obvious how this slogan is supposed to relate to the ontological argument. Some, most notably Alvin Plantinga, have even judged Kant's dictum to be totally irrelevant to Anselm's version of the ontological argument. In this paper I argue, against Plantinga and others, that Kant's claim is indeed relevant to Anselm's argument, in the straightforward sense that if the claim is true, then Anselm's argument is unsound.