The Sufferings of the Biblical Job as an Icon of Postmodernity: The ‘loneliness’ of God and the human being in a consumerist paradise

This article explores ways in which the attitudes of the biblical Job may enrich postmodernist philosophy by addressing some of its inherent problems. The discussion focuses in particular on the biblical Book of Job that can serve as an example of confronting suffering as a dramatic implication of human life that denies the sense of happiness. In an attempt to suppress this fear, the postmodern human contests, in various ways, the truth of their ontic frailty and the fragility of their constructed “happiness”. The questions that the biblical Job posed to God with a distinct air of resentment and regret seem at first sight to be meaningless as they are thrown into the void of a terrifying Universe. The critique offered here comes out of a Christian philosophical and theological base which posits that belief in the sacrum, transcendence, God and the hope of eternal life are key elements in a meaning system that fosters mental health and human happiness. In the postmodern system of meaning, individuals may no longer question the existence of God for the sake of human freedom, nor seek evidence of God’s non-existence, but simply live as if God does not exist. From a Christian perspective, it appears that non-belief in a transcendent spiritual dimension can inline people in postmodern society to feel that they live in an atmosphere of existential anxiety. Similarly, a Christian critique would consider that it is the postmodernist view of fluidity in all aspects of human life that leads to uncertainty and suffering, a causal consequence that people may not advert to. In this way, confronted with many postmodern phenomena, they may unknowingly live in a world of illusion. The Christian critique would also see it is as necessary and important to address constructively the challenges raised by cultural postmodernity. For this reason, the article will reflect on the realism of human suffering, the forgetting and rejection of God, as well as transcendence.

Linguistic Intuitions and the Voice of Competence

This chapter defends a “voice of competence” (“VoC”) view of the speaker intuitions on which Chomskyans rely, whereby they are a relatively direct causal consequence of (non-conceptual) representations generated by a speaker’s I-language. Devitt has argued against this view, defending instead the view that, although speakers’ intuitions are ultimately based upon items produced by an internal grammar for central cognition, these items merely “have” and do not represent syntactic properties. Moreover, what speakers ordinarily hear are not those linguistic properties, but only “the message” the items convey. Speaker’s intuitions are therefore just part of their empirical knowledge of items in the world generally, no different in principle from their knowledge of typing. The chapter argues that internal items “having” properties cannot explain the way that syntactic properties are integrated into perception; only representations of properties can do that, which, when they do, also inform speakers’ intuitions. The conclusion looks at the considerable empirical evidence that exists for phonological and syntactic perception often trumping understanding of whatever likely message was intended.

Application of Petri nets for transport streams modeling

One of the possible methods for transport stream modeling is by using Petri's nets [1,2]. This approach turns out to be very convenient for achieving the desired tasks because of the following reasons: the Petri's nets [3] are based on causal-consequence connections found in abundance in transport problems and the graphical representation by means of the net elements is easily percieved by man, i.e. there an easy way of visualisation of the transport problem under consideration. Examples will be given of how transport problems are modeled.

Modality and abstract concepts

Our concerns fall into three areas: (1) Barsalou fails to make clear what simulators are (vs. what they do); (2) activation of perceptual areas of the brain during thought does not distinguish between the activation's being constitutive of concepts or a mere causal consequence (Barsalou needs the former); and (3) Barsalou's attempt to explain how modal symbols handle abstraction fails.