God: A brief philosophical introduction IV

K.H.A. Esmail, University of Cambridge

This is a clear and concise and original investigation of God’s nature and existence. First of all, it considers (among other things) two of God’s traditional properties: being all-knowing and being all-powerful. It argues he cannot possess these properties. But, it argues this is in accord with him being worthy of worship. Secondly, it introduces the notion of evil being “overridden”. It argues he has to bring about other free living things and it is plausible they have to be liable to experience evil due to their conditions. But, it argues the evil in this world is “overridden”. Thirdly, it considers the principal arguments for the claim he does not exist. (They refer to the evil in the world.) It argues they do not establish sufficient grounds for this claim. Finally, it considers some well-known arguments for the claim he exists. It argues they face difficulties. It sets out other arguments: eg, some arguments to increase any degree of belief one has that God can exist. It includes a number of Appendices: God’s sovereignty; Are there sufficient grounds for the claim that, very probably, God does not exist?; Theodicy and some theodicies; Some further remarks on God and time; Some further remarks on a living thing which possesses the power to do this or that freely; Some remarks on God being simple; Some remarks on God being present in a spatial realm and God being present in a non-spatial realm; ... . It covers as a whole the principal parts of the Philosophy of Religion. It unifies these parts to a significant degree. It proceeds regularly by way of formal and clear arguments. It will be of interest to advanced students and specialists in Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Theology. Given its explanation of key terms, its jargon-free language, its clarity and brevity.... , it will be of interest to others, too.

Predictive Minds: Old Problems and New Challenges

Edited by Manuel Curado, University of Minho, Portugal and Steven S. Gouveia, University of Porto, Portugal

The Predictive Processing Theory of Mind is a recent theory developed by philosophers, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists about the nature and function of the brain and its role in creating the conscious mind that we humans, and perhaps some non-human animals, have. The authors that advanced those lines of research believe that there is a fundamental idea that has been overlooked in the research done about the brain until the present: that the brain is a prediction machine with the function of creating hypotheses about the causes of our sensory signals and predictions of possible future sensory signals. Moreover, the internal models of the world created this way are constantly challenged by incorporating the errors of the previous models into new models. From this point of view, the brain's work could be described as a process of making predictions about the upcoming sensory data based on its best current models of the causes of those data. This book intends to critically analyze this theory and its subsequent theoretical and empirical consequences. To achieve that, the volume brings together some of the best experts on Predictive Processing – such as Thomas Metzinger, Wanja Wiese, or Mark Miller – with the goal of presenting some of the advantages of this approach but also some of its caveats.

Sensory Environmental Relationships: Between Memories of the Past and Imaginings of the Future

Edited by Blaž Bajič, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia and Ana Svetel, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Sensory environmental relationships – understood as dynamic, embodied, and emplaced affective sensory perceptions in (and of) the environment – invite us to remember the past, infuse our experiences of the present, and entice us to imagine the future. Ethnographically specific, socially and culturally nuanced approaches to environmental relationships require considerable conceptual and practical flexibility and inventiveness. Reflecting this commitment, 'Sensory Environmental Relationships' aims to offer a new anthropological understanding of how, in our individual and collective lives, senses, places, and temporalities intersect. While anthropologists have been studying the sensory environmental relationships in connection to people’s pasts and presents, futures remain conspicuously absent. By bringing different timeframes into the foreground of the analysis, this volume contributes to filling in the gap in our understanding of the human experience. The volume’s ethnographically based contributions address the questions of how embodied and emplaced practices of sensing, while moving or staying in place in diverse environments, engender, inform, and affect the processes of remembering (and forgetting) the past, experiencing the present, and imagining the future. Drawing on the fields of environmental anthropology, sensory studies, studies of movement and mobility, memory studies, and other related (sub)disciplines, as well as diverse, epistemologically and methodologically experimental approaches, the volume explores the ways in which sensory environmental relationships “touch” upon our pasts, presents, and futures.

Heroic Disobedience: The Forced Marriage Plot and the British Novel, 1747-1880

Leah Grisham

'Heroic Disobedience: The Forced Marriage Plot and the British Novel, 1747-1880' shows the ways in which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels used what the author terms the forced marriage plot - a plot arc in which a greedy father tries to force his daughter into a marriage she does not want but that would be financially expedient to himself - to explore capitalism’s detrimental impacts on women’s right to autonomy. As capitalist economic practices replaced mercantilism, a woman’s value was seen primarily in the economic sense. That is, men came to recognize that women – especially young, marriageable women – could be used as objects of exchange between men. Recognizing this phenomenon, the novelists considered in 'Heroic Disobedience' – Samuel Richardson, Charlotte Lennox, Mary Robinson, Charlotte Smith, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Stone, and Anthony Trollope – depict the very specific ways in which women were raised to become willing pawns in this system. Religious discourse, conduct guides, marriage and property laws, wages, lack of meaningful education, and inheritance practices combined to leave women with no other options besides dependence on their patriarchs. Importantly, authors who use the forced marriage plot go beyond exposing women’s subjugation by creating – and celebrating – heroically disobedient heroines who believe, above all else, that they have the right to determine their own futures: futures in which they are autonomous agents, not subjected objects.

Unwrapping Racism: Dealing with Differences

Chuck Grose

“A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step.” Lao Tzu “Unwrapping Racism: Dealing with Differences” will connect the reader with recent social movements such as gun safety, Black Lives Matter, and college reform movements. The Early social movements would portray racial discrimination within the Women’s Suffrage Movement and the Eugenics/Sterilization Movement. The Civil Right Movement of 1950s/1960s highlights Rosa Parks, Dr. M. L. King, Jr. and Congressman John Lewis. This book will present key issues, such as cultural privilege and its prevalence. The reader will be lifted up from xenophobia, colonialism and slavery while creatively facing individual responses to those issues today. All those approaches move into our societal goals of assimilation, cultural pluralism and the “melting pot” concept. This volume will make the perfect complement to Dr. Grose previous book "Dealing with differences". Every reader can do something, sometime, somewhere to effectively deal with differences. As the book confronts race, it challenges the reader to grapple with action-oriented exercises, questions, and projects relevant to key paragraphs on every page. At the end of the book, the readers will be empowered to tell their own stories about their experiences with race within each chapter.

Italian as a foreign language: Teaching and acquisition in higher education

Edited by Alberto Regagliolo, UKSW University

This manual focuses on teaching Italian as a foreign language in the academic field, taking into consideration the various subjects and disciplines that can be found in a university course in Italian Studies. Various chapters are included within that range, for example, from Italian phonetics and dialectology to art as a means to deepen elements of the Italian language, to morphology with word formations, and to translation as well as subtitling. The range also covers technology as a tool for telecollaboration, academic writing, and learning Italian through geography or the language of vulgarity. Besides, the manual takes into consideration the use of the Italian press for learning, together with the use of comics and cartoons to teach the Italian language. The contribution aims to be a point of reference both for teachers and students who are focusing on linguistics, philology, didactics, and pedagogy. It lays emphasis on the teaching methodology, the instruments of teaching, and the available resources. It also seeks to deal with the various teaching problems and reflects on the disciplines as well as alternative proposals for teaching.

Mantha: Alchemies of the Cultural Turn

Mark K. Warford, SUNY Buffalo State University

Set against the rich and troubled tapestry of the West’s Greco-Roman inheritance, the Sanskrit root 'manth/-', which roughly translates to “a churn” ('mantha') or “to churn” ('manth'), serves as a cauldron into which age-old binaries are blended. A mantha of the Greek metaphysical notion of the One and the Many drives explorations of a variety of themes, including the Feminine and the Masculine, Self and Other, East and West, Heroes and Monsters, Olympians and Titans, Creativity and Innovation. Accordingly, the psychoanalytic canon is (re)introduced to a diversity of perspectives, from linguistics and Translation Studies to educational theory and horror fiction. Guided by the 'Opus Contra Culturam', Warford, infusing his background in linguistics, Translation Studies, Spanish, Sociocultural Theory, and Global Humanities, demonstrates the importance of stretching beyond what is known in one’s cultural milieu, that “one” taking many forms: the citizen, the student, the professional, the innovator, the scholar, and the infinite intersections of group identifications into which we are susceptible to being siloed. Specific topics include cultural complexes and trauma, Titanism, integrative approaches to human development and learning theory, the Monstrous, as well as creativity and innovation studies.

Pitirim A. Sorokin: Rediscovering a Master of Sociology

Emiliana Mangone, University of Salerno, Italy

Pitirim A. Sorokin is a controversial figure in the history of sociology, of which he remains one of the masters. Those who read Sorokin today must, however, frame the historical reality experienced by the scholar (his Russian and American experiences) because the evolution of his thought had several phases that correspond to his personal, family, and professional lives (he founded and directed the Department of Sociology at Harvard University for many years). This Russian-American sociologist argued that socio-cultural phenomena must be studied following their dynamism (in space and time) since the constituent elements (personality, society, and culture) are constantly changing and cannot be studied separately. Reviving his thought is not a form of celebration but a moment to reflect on how some sociology classics still have their relevance and how, all too often, they are forgotten. This is why this book takes up his main conceptualizations by anchoring them to contemporary society, whose transformations are often difficult to read, and above all to highlight how the role of sociology as a science has, in part, lost sight of its ontological foundation as a service to humanity or public service. The theoretical paths taken by Sorokin range from Social and Cultural Dynamics to Social Mobility and to many other topics, such as man and society in calamities or love and altruism - one of Sorokin's latest topics. All these topics can revive the idea of a sociology that holds together the micro, meso, and macro dimensions and allows us to predict changes in society.

Personalism and Metaphysics

Is Personalism a First Philosophy?

Juan Manuel Burgos, Universidad Villanueva, Spain

Personalism seeks to understand the person in its richness, complexity, and unity, and, to achieve this goal, it has developed a rich and solid anthropology as well as an ethic of the person that is having repercussions in the philosophical and sociopolitical sphere. But what is the value of this philosophy? Does it offer a mere description of the reality of a phenomenological type, or does it penetrate to the bottom of what exists, offering its intelligible essence? Does it offer an ultimate explanation of the person, or is her vision subordinated to a deeper and more decisive one that would correspond to metaphysics? To answer these questions, the author, an international expert in personalist philosophy, first defines the various meanings in which the term metaphysics can be understood and, secondly, does a comparison between personalism, in particular, integral Personalism, and the metaphysics of being. The analysis concludes that personalism can be considered a first sectoral philosophy, that is, a philosophy that does not need other philosophical referents to establish itself as a philosophy thanks to its direct access to experience, where the person is found. This conclusion is based on the epistemology of integral experience and imposes a review of the traditional role of metaphysics and its connection with anthropology in general and Personalism in particular.

Life as an Intelligence Test: The Predictive Power of IQ

Anthony Walsh, Boise State University

This book examines intelligence as it applies to various facets of human life. It explores the evolutionary origin of intelligence and the genetics and neurobiology of intelligence. Every human being is intelligent, but some are more intelligent than others. We know this both by observing different people’s behavior and position in life and by their different intelligence quotient (IQ) scores. Most of the business of life can be conducted on a basis of habit, with little need for exceptional intelligence, which is irrelevant for many day-to-day pursuits. However, people of higher intelligence do much better in life than those of lower intelligence in so many ways. They attain higher social class, better physical and mental health, are less likely to be criminals, and many other things. IQ tests measure different cognitive abilities, but there is a factor common to them all that psychometricians call Spearman's g, or simply g. What this means is that in tasks that tax the brain, however different they may be from one another, if a person is good at one mental task, he or she is likely to be good at others, although not necessarily to the same degree.

Cross-cultural Business and Management: Perspectives and Practices

Edited by Chandan Maheshkar, East Nimar Society for Education (ENSE), Indore, India and Vinod Sharma, SCMHRD, Symbiosis International University Pune, India

Culture is a 'cumulative custom of beliefs, values, rituals, and sanctions practiced by a group of people, province or country'. It is a more sensitive dimension of internationalization of any business and making it perform in a culturally diverse environment. Sometimes, nations/states lose their normative significance in a cross-cultural setting (e.g., India, South America). It is because they undermine their earlier philosophies of norms, values, and beliefs or neglect the cultural significance of other nations. In the current business and workplace dynamics, cultural components introduced significant changes in the core assumptions of business practices and skill expectations. This paradigm shift has forced business executives and managers to know how cultural differences affect inter- and intra-organizational functioning. It has made gaining cross-cultural compatibility a serious concern for business and academic communities worldwide. Therefore, this book facilitates business leaders, expatriate managers, business executives, academicians and scholars to explore different cross-cultural business perspectives and practices.

Revisiting Diaspora Spaces in India: A Contemporary Overview

Edited by Joydev Maity, Raiganj University, India

This edited volume is a detailed and critical study of Indian diaspora writings and its diverse themes. It focuses on dynamics and contemporary perspectives of Indian diaspora writings and analyzes emerging themes of this field like the experience of the Bihari diaspora, migration to Gulf countries, the relation between diasporic experience and self-translation, uprootedness and resistance discourse through ecocritical praxis and many more. With the aid of a subtle theoretical framework, the volume closely examines some of the key texts such as 'Goat Days, Baumgartner’s Bombay, An Atlas of Impossible Longing, The Circle of Reason', and authors including Shauna Singh Baldwin, M.G. Vassanji, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, V.S. Naipaul and others. The book also explores diaspora literature written in regional language and later translated into English and how they align with the fundamental Indian diaspora writings. A significant contribution to Indian diaspora writings; this volume will be of great importance to scholars and researchers of diaspora literature, migration and border studies, cultural, memory, and translation studies.

Handbook of Research on Cultural and Cross-Cultural Psychology

Edited by Chandan Maheshkar, East Nimar Society for Education (ENSE), Indore, India and Jayant Sonwalkar, Institute of Management Studies, University of Indore, India

In a human system, a major proportion of behavioral attributes and values are determined by respective cultures and interaction with other cultures. Cultural and cross-cultural psychology has emerged as an interdisciplinary area that explores how a culture regulates society and its business, how cross-cultural interactions affect the psychologies of individuals as well as societies, behavioral variability under various cultural conditions, and how to harmonize cultural diversities. Organizationally and philosophically, cultural and cross-cultural psychology differs from other areas of social sciences. It is a common phenomenon that as people engaged with cultural practices, their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors come to reflect their cultural values and beliefs. As a process, people formulate, replicate, transform, and/or transmit their cultural practices in their daily social and/or business interactions. This edited book ‘Handbook of Research on Cultural and Cross-cultural Psychology’ is focused on dynamics that amplify knowledge, skills, and behaviors relevant to deal with different cultural and cross-cultural issues. All the chapters suggest that ‘relevance’ and ‘being critical’ are qualities widely attributed to efforts that fill the gaps between theory and practice in cultural and cross-cultural psychology.

Concepción Gimeno de Flaquer (1850-1919): Her Personal Letters, Short Stories, and Journalism

Ana Isabel Simón Alegre, Adelphi University

This book explores how Concepción Gimeno de Flaquer’s evolution as a writer was closely linked to the development of her political-literary project, in which a feminist activist agenda plays an important role. This critical edition contributes to existing research on Gimeno de Flaquer by examining a collection of texts that have not been studied in-depth. This monograph-length publication is the first one to feature a translation of significant portions of Gimeno de Flaquer’s work. 'Concepción Gimeno de Flaquer (1850-1919): Her Personal Letters, Short Stories, and Journalism' includes ten letters that Concepción Gimeno wrote to the Spanish actor and theatre entrepreneur Manuel Catalina y Rodríguez (1820-1886), seven short stories, and a selection of her seventeen most representative newspaper articles.

Concepción Gimeno de Flaquer (1850-1919): Cartas, cuentos cortos y artículos periodísticos

Ana Isabel Simón Alegre, Adelphi University

Concepción Gimeno de Flaquer (Alcañiz, 1850-Buenos Aires, 1919) fue una periodista y editora española que dedicó su vida al mundo de las letras. Fue, además de escritora, una apasionada viajera en una época en la que cruzar el Atlántico no era una tarea fácil. En sus viajes transanlánticos puso en marcha y participó en numerosas tertulias y se dedicó a dirigir periódicos, escribir novelas, cuentos cortos, cartas, ensayos, críticas de teatro, artículos de opinión y columnas de sociedad en diferentes periódicos. En este libro se explora cómo en la trayectoria vital y profesional de Concepción Gimeno de Flaquer quedó entrelazado su proyecto político literario en el que el activismo feminista jugaría un importante papel. Esta edición anotada contribuye a las investigaciones previas sobre Gimeno de Flaquer analizando una colección de textos que no se han estudiado aún en detalle. ‘Concepción Gimeno De Flaquer (1850-1919): Cartas, cuentos cortos y artículos periodísticos’ incluye diez cartas que Concepción Gimeno escribió al actor y empresario teatral Manuel Catalina y Rodriguez (1820-1886), siete cuentos y una selección de diecisiete de sus artículos periodísticos más representativos.

Literary Representations of Japan: At the Intersection of David Mitchell and Haruki Murakami’s Worlds

Eugenia Prasol

This book will focus on analyzing the different aspects of Japan's representation in the novels of Haruki Murakami and David Mitchell. It is proven that Murakami creates and recreates Japan without implementing any orientalist features or exotic imagery. In the works of both authors, the intent to depict a new world of Japan stripped of traditional stereotypical traits becomes clear. The difference between Murakami and Mitchell's representation of Japan lies in the difference between Japan as seen by the Japanese and Japan as seen by modern Westerners, but both are 'correct' images of Japan. It is a recreation of the global image of Japan. In that sense, the texts of Murakami and Mitchell are complementary representations of Japan through East-West cultural dialogue. Studying the representations of Japan and Japanese national character helps to understand the role of Murakami and Mitchell in the formation of a new image of Japan, the de-stereotyping of anachronistic ideas about Japanese national exclusivity, enriching by doing so the world literature with new visions of the country and its culture. The purpose of the comparative analysis of English and Japanese literary works performed in this work is to reveal both deep analogies and differences in the representation of the image of Japan, actualizing the national specificity of the texts. This research advances the understanding of how both general and specific components of literary representations of Japan and Japaneseness are manifested in the East-West cultural dialogue.

Russian Nights Autocracy and Testimony: Life in Russia during the Soviet Period as Told by Those Who Lived it

Roberto Echavarren

The details of the Jewish Holocaust have become part of our history through the testimony of those who survived the death camps. The details of Lenin’s and Stalin’s reigns of terror are far less known because they took place behind a wall of secrecy, and survivors have been reluctant to speak about them for fear of retribution. This is an encompassing volume presenting an intense display, as complete as can be, of testimonies, gathered between 2001 and 2005 of actors implicated in different aspects of Russian life roughly through the period 1917-1956. They were people who had lived under the Soviet regime in times of peace and in times of war, from the Red Terror through the Great Terror. One must bear in mind the political and economic conditions in which those lives developed: the one-Party rule placed above both the government and the citizens, the abashment of the division of powers, the suppression of private property and private economic initiative, the political police, and the GULAG. Russian Nights offers a wide and detailed perspective of what we call “the Russian Century”: Lenin’s takeover, the all-powerful Party, the GULAG, and the Second World War.

Directing the Play

Tekena Mark, Rivers State University, Nigeria

Numerous books have been written on the art of directing from the classical to contemporary times. Many of these works have concentrated on different facets of the discipline of directing such as the definition, history, and development of directing, as well as the qualities, functions, and types of directors. However, areas of directing that have not received much scholarly attention include works that serve as manuals for budding directors and studies that reflect the theory and practice of directing in Africa, especially from Nigerian theatre practitioners. While studies on directing, such as Wainstein’s 'Stage Directing: A Director’s Itinerary' (2012), Dean and Carra’s 'Fundamentals of Play Directing' (2009), and Johnson’s 'Visions Towards a Mission: The Art of Interpretative Directing' (2003), provide general insights on the art of directing plays, Emasealu’s 'The Theatre of Ola Rotimi: Production and Performance Dynamics' (2010) and Uwatt’s 'Playwriting and Directing in Nigeria: Interviews with Ola Rotimi' (2004), document the directorial practice of the Nigerian director, Ola Rotimi. Aside from documenting the directing techniques of key Western directors, this book’s advantage over existing works is that it documents the directorial styles of Ola Rotimi and other West African directors, as well as the directorial techniques of directors from South, North, and East Africa. It also traces the evolution of the theatre stage, examines the directorial implications of the arena, proscenium, thrust, traverse and African traditional theatre stage orientations, and engages the notions of blocking, movement, directorial concept and directorial approach. In particular, this book aspires to contribute to the discourse on play directing with perspectives from African theatre. It also fills gaps in previous studies by delving into the notions of theatre and directing, the director’s history, qualities, and tools. It examines types of directors, functions of the director, directing principles, and key Western and African theories of performance. It also evaluates the history of the theatre stage, the characteristics, benefits and drawbacks, and directorial implications of the arena stage, proscenium stage, thrust stage, traverse stage, African traditional theatre stage, the use of blocking, movement, and the meaning of directorial concept and directorial approach.

Star Wars: Essays Exploring a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Edited by Emily Strand and Amy H. Sturgis

'Star Wars' is a global phenomenon that in 2022 celebrated its 45th year of transmedia storytelling, and it has never been more successful than it is today. More 'Star Wars' works than ever are currently available or in simultaneous development, including live-action and animated series, novels, comics, and merchandise, as well as the feature films for which the franchise is best known. 'Star Wars' fandom is worldwide, time-tested, and growing; academic interest in the franchise, both inside and outside of the classroom, is high. This accessible and multidisciplinary anthology covers topics across the full history of the franchise. With a range of essays by authors whose disciplines run from culture and religious studies to film, feminism, and philology, 'Star Wars: Essays Exploring a Galaxy Far, Far Away' speaks to academics in the field, students in the classroom, and anyone looking to broaden their understanding and deepen their appreciation for 'Star Wars'.

Seeking to Understand the World: Literary Journalism of Vincent Sheean

Anish Dave, Georgia Southwestern State University

Vincent Sheean, a groundbreaking American foreign correspondent and author, is known for reporting from Europe, North Africa, and Asia, writing news reports, articles, and books. A few books and articles have described Vincent Sheean’s life, and briefly discussed his major nonfiction books. However, no book-length study or article has closely examined his nonfiction books. 'Seeking to Understand the World: Literary Journalism of Vincent Sheean', textually analyzes his five nonfiction, journalistic books to examine them for characteristics of literary journalism. Spanning nearly the entirety of his journalistic career, these books include 'Personal History' (1935), 'Not Peace but a Sword' (1939), 'Between the Thunder and the Sun' (1943), 'Lead, Kindly Light' (1949), and 'Nehru: The Years of Power' (1960). Set in different world areas, the books illuminate events as disparate as the Riffian war, the Spanish Civil War, the infamous Munich pact, the Nazi bombing of London, and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Sheean’s books provide an in-depth, personal look at these and related events. This book includes analysis of Sheean’s works, finding that they have several prominent characteristics of literary journalism: stories and scenes, cohesive structure, lifelike characters, vivid description, well-crafted sentences, immersive reporting, among others.