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1. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Dragos Bigu The Place of Values in Scientific Knowledge
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In this paper I argue that the values supported by scientists can have a role in episodes of theory choice. In the first part, I characterize the value- and the rulebased accounts of theory choice. In the second part, I analyze how the thesis of underdetermination of theory by empirical data can be used to argue for a value-based account. I discuss two versions of the underdetermination thesis, arguing that the weaker version, underdetermination by the evidence available at a particular time, is sufficient for establishing the role of values in theory selection. Many authors distinguish between cognitive and non-cognitive values, considering that only the former ones have a legitimate role in theory choice. I defend this distinction, showing that it has both a normative and a descriptive dimension. I argue that cognitive values must not be seen as indicators of truth, but they can be characterized by their relation to the goal of science. In the end, I argue that, in spite of being justified and useful, the distinction between cognitive and non-cognitive values is not clear-cut.
2. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Pedro Blas González The Economics of Being: The Struggle for Existence in Prehistory
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This paper takes a phenomenological perspective regarding the difficulties encountered in daily life by man in prehistory. I argue that the economics of beingnecessarily establishes man as a being that must make choices. Of these, man must eventually arrive at the realization that higher, rather than lower choices will safeguard human survival, well being and allow for prosperity. The economics of being is a form of identifying economic choice-making as a natural disposition of man’s. It is the latter condition that makes man act in the world. However, even though man must act, action cannot be blind. Instead, human action is motivated and guided by man’s sense of interiority. That is, man’s existential capacity for self-reflection is also what can deliver us to autonomous rule. This form of reflective choice-making is a creative act. The paper attempts to trace this aspect of the human condition back to prehistory, in order to demonstrate that societies, institutions, invention, technology, artistic creation and economic responsibility come about as the result of human industriousness. None of the aforementioned are creations of modern man.
3. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Benaouda Bensaid, Fadila Grine Old Age and Elderly Care: An Islamic Perspective
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A proper understanding of the Islamic perspective on old age with particular consideration of significant current changes and adaptations affecting Muslim elderly’s emotional, cultural and socio-economic needs, transitions and transformations requires a degree of acquaintance with Islam’s religious principles and values. This paper discusses a number of theological and moral concepts and themes pertaining to the elderly in Islam while highlighting the moral and ethical value system underlying Muslims’ position on ageing and old age. This study shows the extent to which the axiomatic perspective of Islam on old age is essentially shaped by religious beliefs, laws and spiritual practice. This inquiry into Muslim values on old age and elderly care would be of benefit to researchers on religious and cultural values; particularly in multicultural contexts, and yet again more instrumental to health professionals, counselors and social workers interacting with the Muslim elderly.
4. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Georg W. Oesterdiekhoff Psychological Stage Development and Societal Evolution. A Completely New Foundation to the Interrelationship between Psychology and Sociology
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Auguste Comte, the founder of sociology, and Norbert Elias, the last classical sociologist, based their sociologies on the idea that humankind has gone from astage of childhood to adult stages. The essay shows that there has actually taken place a psychogenetic evolution of humankind in history. Empirical researchesacross the past generations, namely Piagetian and intelligence cross-cultural researches, have been continuing to support the idea, whether the researchers involved have been aware of it or not. The essay demonstrates further, that the history of society, economy, culture, law, morals, politics, customs, religion, etc. can only be described against the background of developmental psychology.
5. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Patrizia Torricelli The Cognitive Basis of Value in Grammatical Form: A Case Study of the Italian Verbs vedere volere and avere
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The grammar rules of the modal and auxiliary verbs vedere (see), volere (want) and avere (have) in modern Italian reveal a cognitive scheme underlying thesuperficial linguistic structure that depends on a certain conceptualization of reality within the Western world cultural models. The article therefore puts forward a semantic approach to grammatical rules based on these conceptual and cultural motivations. The principles of structural European semiology, as introduced by Saussure, form the basis of the paper; particularly the understanding of signs as double entities (signifier/signified) whose arbitrary connections are assured by a system of sociocultural values, so that the cultural value of historical linguistic association impacts upon grammatical rules, meaning and social understanding. Grammar enables the actualization of certain semantic meanings amidst the plurality of virtual values contained within a certain syntactic combination of units. The inclusion of certain values within a given discursive isotopy supports a mode of signification, but it does not annul the possibility of the others that might be anchored in alternative discursive isotopies. In other words, there is distinction between the function of a sign in a system (langue) and the function that the same sign possesses in the concrete act of its usage (parole). Thus, this paper revises Saussure’s semiological model from a cognitive perspective, placing particular emphasis on the question of cultural values.
6. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Kyung Han You, Jiha Kim Marcuse’s Legacy and Foucault’s Challenge: A Critical Inquiry into the Relationship between Comedic Pleasure and the Popular Media
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The primary goal of this paper is to investigate the theoretical and methodological applicability of the relevant theories of Marcuse and Foucault to analyzing the relationship between comedic pleasure and the popular media. The researchers investigate the similarities of and the differences between the respective positions of Marcuse and Foucault as they relate to power relations, subjectivity, and practice. Likewise, the methodological applicability of these theorists’ work to a discourse analysis of how media content constructs comedic pleasure is considered. Overall, the present study explored the arrangement and deployment of discourses of comedic pleasure as exploited by the power/knowledge mechanism of the media and the entertainment industry. And, through this discussion, the current study argued that three key statements constitute a discursive framework for the analysis of comedic pleasure in the popular media.
7. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Mahdi Dahmardeh, Hossein Timcheh Memar, Abbas Timcheh Memar On Ethics and Culture: A Matter of Variation or Deviation? A study on Top Notch Series
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In pursuit of moralities and beliefs in the grey area of culture, the researchers carried out a study on Top Notch series to pinpoint the trace of ethics. This paper seeks to unfold the representation of ethics as an indubitable part of culture in Top Notch series. After having extracted all culturally and ethically-related topics and texts of Top Notch Series, 25 instances, featuring 6 patterns, were collected. Later these 6 patterns were dubbed as: violence, superstition, modesty,individualised ethics, religion, and modernity. Having analysed these 6 themes, well representing beliefs and moralities, the researchers came to the conclusion that both misrepresentation of ethics and underrepresentation and overrepresentation of different cultures are at work. The results show a reconsideration of therepresentation of ethics, or better to say reconsideration of misrepresentation of ethics which might find its root in wrong dominance of culture over ethics.
8. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Peter Mathews The Morality Meme: Nietzsche and A Serious Man
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Pairing together the Coen brothers film A Serious Man (2009) with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, this paper looks at questions about morality, illusion, and the influence of Jewish thought on contemporary ethics. Beginning with a reading of Nietzsche that locates his discussion of the Jews within its properhistorical context, it traces the beginnings of the “morality meme,” the notion of a universal moral reward that, Nietzsche argues, arises during the Deuteronomistperiod of Jewish history. The second part of the paper looks at how A Serious Man also engages in an interrogation of this moralistic overcoding of the universe, with a particular emphasis on how these questions upset Larry Gopnik’s views of both science and religion. The essay then concludes with a look at the poisonous effects of the “morality meme,” showing in particular how it has influenced the psychology of anti-Semitism. Rather than a rejection of Jewishness, the paper concludes that in A Serious Man the Coen brothers engage in a careful but loving criticism of their own culture that requires them to distance themselves from the problematic effects of its religious morality.
9. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Cyril-Mary P. Olatunji, Olugbenga O. Alabi A Philosophical Comparison of John 1:1-18 and the Yoruba Concept of ÒrÒ
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The concept of ÒrÒ among the Yoruba people in Nigeria has a lot in common with the biblical concept of Λoγos. This paper explores Λoγos as derived from Greek Logos translated as Word into English, and its parallelisms with ÒrÒ a fêted concept among the Yoruba. The paper provides evidence that both conceptsare related to exoteric functions within their distinct cultural communities. Finally, the paper opens these issues to the possibilities of cross-cultural research and semiotics.
10. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Adrian Nita Leibniz on Spontaneity as a Basic Value
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Leibniz sustains three arguments for spontaneity: the argument from the complete notion, the argument from substantial forms and the argument from monadicspontaneity. In order to see the nature of spontaneity and whether the spontaneity is an inferior value with respect to freedom, as it appears in the Theodicy, inthe first part of the paper I will present spontaneity in connection with the theory of complete notion; in the second part, spontaneity and substantial forms; in the third part, spontaneity of monads; then I will finish with a more general view about spontaneity and freedom.
11. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 11 > Issue: 2
Ema Pires Re-scripting Colonial Heritage
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This paper explores alternative meanings and appropriations of the category colonial heritage. How do different categories of people practice and appropriatespaces that have been labelled as colonial heritage? How are these formely colonial spaces (re-) appropriated, contested, commodifed, in contemporary societies? My interest here is strongly influenced by Ann Stoler’s work on Imperial Debris, ruins and ruination (Stoler, 2008). Building upon her argument, I argue for a critical ethnography of how colonial spaces are practiced, experienced, inhabited, rescripted, by multiple agencies and agents, in contemporary times. Based in ethnographic research, this text explores processes of labelling and circulating through spaces in Melaka (West Malaysia), explores linkages between nostalgia and alternative notions of heritage, and questions the local meanings ascribed to heritage (translatable as warisan, in bahasa melayu). Building upon Rosaldo’s (1989) notion of imperialist nostalgia and Hertzfeld’s (2005) concept of structural nostalgia, I end by discussing the production and consumption of colonial nostalgia in contemporary times.
12. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 11 > Issue: 2
Elena Serdyukova Keeping of Cultural Heritage in Emigration: Experience of Russia Abroad
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The research reported in this paper examines the spiritual heritage of the Russian émigrés of the first half of the 20th century. The Russian émigrés is aunique phenomenon in the history of Russia. The October Socialist Revolution 1917, shock of creative intelligentsia at the events taking place in the country, rejection of the Soviet government and exile – all that became a trigger mechanism for formation of a huge Russian culture layer abroad. While the Soviet government made attempts “to erase” a significant part of the cultural and historic memory of the Russian people, eradicate from the Russian soul the belief in God and was rapidly building a new state with a new ideology, the Russian emigrants became a kind of protector for the great Russian culture and traditions of the Russian people. Largely owing to the Russian émigrés and their huge love for the Motherland the thread connecting the Russia’s past and future was not broken.
13. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 11 > Issue: 2
Susan LT Ashley Re-telling, Re-cognition, Re-stitution: Sikh Heritagization in Canada
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In Canada, the language and techniques of museums and heritage sites have been adopted and adapted by some immigrant communities to make sense oftheir place within their new country. For some groups, “heritagization” is a new value, mobilized for diverse purposes. New museums and heritage sites serve as a form of ethnic media, becoming community gathering points, taking on pedagogical roles, enacting citizenship, and enabling strategic assertion of identity in the public sphere. This article explores this enactment of heritage and citizen-membership through a case study, the Sikh Heritage Museum, developed in Abbotsford by Indo-Canadians. Established in 2011 in an historic and still-functioning gurdwara, the museum is an example of a community’s desire to balance inward-looking historical consciousness and community belonging, with outward-looking voice, recognition and acceptance by mainstream Canadian society. The museum has also become a site of tension between top-down and bottom-up initiatives, where amateur and local expressions butt up against professionalized government activities such as the Canadian Historical Recognition Program that seek to insert formal recognition and social inclusion policies. The article considers the effects of this resource and power differential on the museum’s development, and on the sensibilities and practices of immigrant “heritage” and “citizenship” in Canada.
14. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 11 > Issue: 2
Vintilă Mihăilescu “Something Nice.” Pride Houses, Post-peasant Society and the Quest for Authenticity
15. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 11 > Issue: 2
Sonia Catrina, Cyril Isnart Introduction: Mapping the Moving Dimensions of Heritage
16. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 11 > Issue: 2
Meglena Zlatkova (Re-) Settled People and Moving Heritage – Borders, Heirs, Inheritance
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This paper discusses inheritance after migration on both sides of the Bulgarian-Turkish border. A specific approach to the (re-)settled people and movingobjects, inheritance and patrimonialisation of the movement, instrumentalized by the (state) border, is applied in a comparative way to two specific groups: the Bulgarians from Aegean Thrace, or the so called “Thracian Bulgarians” resettled after the Balkan wars, and the Turks who were born in Bulgaria and resettled in Turkey during the several migration waves in the twentieth century in two localities – Tsarevo, Bulgaria and Edirne, Turkey. In this study, heritage is thought of as inheritance from an activist position, as ritualised and everyday life practices, as reactualisation of meanings, network of heirs and circulating objects – values, symbols, knowledge and memory. The paper analyses practices of crossing the border of heirs as: as tourists, as explorers of their origins, as neighbours inhabiting border territories. Nowadays, on an institutional level, they are engaged in developing projects that aim at transborder collaboration and in exhibiting cultural heritage with a focus on the levels of cultural diversity in the places close to the border.
17. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 11 > Issue: 2
Michel Rautenberg, Sarah Rojon Hedonistic Heritage: Digital Culture and Living Environment
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History is not anymore the prerogative of historians, nor is displaying heritage the exclusive privilege of museum curators. In the digital era, local interconnectedamateurs commit themselves to the cultural circuit of heritage through the mediation of globalised images. In that circuit, heritage and social memory take aparticular form: as resources for tourism and trade, but also resources for collective action, social engagement and cultural production. “Ordinary people” engage in playful leisure such as genealogy, local history, photography, walking, exploring, surfing on the Internet, self-publishing, etc. As do-it-yourself hobbies associating offline and online practices, these hedonist activities, which blend production and consumption, creation and transmission, tend to redraw heritage communities. What do they tell us about the change of commodity, space and time? What do they tell us about the contemporary process of heritagisation and the role of people as well as the place of institutions in it? We focus on the shifts induced by the emergence of empowered actors, the “prosumers,” who participate in various networks, institutional as well as non-institutional, combining amateurs and professionals. Their collaborative experiences lead to design spaces of inspirational actions that we highlight in the context of two post-industrial areas, Swansea (UK) and Saint-Etienne (France).
18. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 11 > Issue: 2
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein Believers and Secularists: “Postmodernism,” Relativism, and Fake Reasoning
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In spite of the long tradition of coexistence, and in spite of the emergence of some kind of “postmodern relativism,” the positions of believers and secularist remain very distinct. What is it more precisely that distinguishes secularists from believers? In this article I explore the topics of “postmodernism” and relativism in order to establish parallels and differences. In particular, I compare two critiques of “western” relativism, one formulated by Muslim scholar Ziauddin Sardar and the other by the American philosopher Allan Bloom who criticizes relativism as a belief.
19. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 11 > Issue: 2
Eloy Martos Núñez, Alberto Martos García Tourist Neoreadings of Heritage in Local and Transnational Contexts
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Tourism is a worldwide phenomenon which is causing both a rereading and a rewriting of tradition. Heritage, apart from its academic (ethnographic, historiographical, etc.) or cultural (identity of peoples) consideration, is nowadays an important tourist resource. Thus, it is included within more global markets and it also becomes the engine of local, regional and national development of communities. This supposes a reconceptualisation of cultural goods according to mechanisms which this paper describes with the support of determined paradigms (interpretative communication, ecocriticism, etc.), and also according to studies of explanatory cases, such as the intangibles of water culture and the way in which its legends have been displayed in order to catch the attention of visitors.
20. Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology: Volume > 11 > Issue: 2
Nicolito A. Gianan Heritage-making and the Language of Auctoritas and Potestas
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Heritage-making can mean many things to different cultures, especially with the advent of multiculturalism and interculturalism. From this perspective, awide array of cultural items, devices and values can be witnessed, and some of these are significant, yet others are considered in the balance. To argue that heritagemaking is an ongoing process brings to light the fact that cultures and the actors involved do not only have a task in the social order, but also the knowhow to direct the way of their discourses. At its core is the view that one must deal with language games, which effectively engage the active participants in circulating heritage. These games are taken into account as clusters of speech acts rules that are classified as assertives, commissives and directives, which correspond to the three types of rule: hegemony, hierarchy and heteronomy. Nonetheless, heritage-making under the contemporary signs of the times can be appropriated, communicated, substituted or even challenged by partakers of a certain culture and by way of a choice of language employed. It is in the context of the latter that we specifically lay emphasis on the language of auctoritas and potestas as decisive in cultural heritage-making.