"Law week 2005 highlights." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (196), pp. 33.

The chief concepts involved are those of piety and impiety, and after a thorough analysis of the philosophical texts Mikalson offers a refined definition of ...

This paper discusses reconciliation as a strategy to heal social wounds caused by dictatorial regimes or deep economic crises. The paper treats two such examples: The failed attempts of the Icelandic government to reach a deal with the UK and the Netherlands about the repayment of debts incurred by the bankrupt Landsbanki Íslands and the prosecution of Mr. Geir Haarde, formerly Prime Minister of Iceland. It is argued that although reconciliation strategies have in some cases been partially successful, it (...) can be counterproductive to prefer moral aspirations or goals, such as rebuilding trust after serious political, social or economic disintegration, to strictly legal ways of dealing with individual cases. As the case with Mr. Haarde shows, the endeavor to achieve moral goals using legal means can backfire in unexpected ways. (shrink)

The algorithmic turn in photography raises the question of whether an algorithmically generated image is even a photograph at all. This paradox is abundant on India's urban streets, where the pedestrian or road user is met with giant photo saturated flex hoardings printed with political and community messages and photo-shopped portraits of gods, chief ministers and party workers. In this article, attention to photo-based political posters alongside art practices sharing common elements of digital capture and postproduction contextualizes a reading (...) of technologically produced visual landscapes in the South Indian city of Bangalore. Informed by Vilèm Flusser, the techno-materiality of hoardings are interpreted as visual practices whose reliance on Microsoft and Adobe softwares reveal more than the semiotic information that is ostensibly transmitted; in so doing the extent to which photography is a useful entry point for assessing the visuality in which we're currently living and how this gets locally inflected in the case of India is explored. (shrink)

According to the Zuǒ zhuàn, in 607 BCE Zhào Chuān murdered Lord Líng of Jìn, but the Spring and Autumn ascribes the assassination to Zhào Dùn, senior member of the Zhào lineage and chief minister of Jìn. Remarks attributed to Confucius defend the ascription to Zhào Dùn, stating that had he fled across the border, he would have avoided blame. That Zhào Dùn was assigned responsibility for a crime he did not commit has been a source of much (...) discussion and has been described as “false” or “inaccurate.” An overview of flights into exile in Spring and Autumn-period China indicates that although flight sometimes provided a practical mechanism for escaping difficulties, crossing the border without official sanction had substantial political and religious ramifications, including loss of position in the ancestral temple. Confucius’s remark may be understood as framing Zhào Dùn’s failure to flee across the border in terms of ritual or legal rules, implying that crossing the border would have removed him from a position of responsibility. Later versions of the story do not mention border crossing, focusing instead on moral responsibility, and their explanations of why blame was assigned to Zhào Dùn were attempts to rationalize recording practices that were based on earlier, Spring and Autumn-period norms, which no longer made sense in later times. (shrink)

The notion of ‘rhetorical bodies’ argues the cause of the rhetorical elements in the material and the material elements in the rhetorical in ways that can be seen as analogous to the bi-partite modes of Deleuzian film philosophy, ‘movement-image’ and ‘time-image’. Tamil films of the 1940s and 1950s bear the strong imprints of the rhetorical elements of the Self-Respect Movement and Dravidian Movement, which took root in different versions during the 1920s–60s. The narrative locations of the bodies in the Tamil (...) films of the 1940s and 1950s provide interesting theoretical and analytical challenges if one seeks to combine the Deleuzian notions of ‘movement-image’ with the notions of material rhetorics. The coming together of these notions provides new pointers to the understanding of an important phase in the history of Tamil cinema for its implications on the long-running nexus between politics and films in the state of Tamil Nadu. The Deleuzian trajectory in film philosophy provides more than enough pointers to examine early Tamil cinema's attempts to construct ‘movement-images’ through rhetorical bodies. This paper seeks to examine the contexts of ‘movement-images’ and the role of ‘rhetorical bodies’ in constructing the same in Velaikari, scripted by C. N. Annadurai. Popularly known as Aringnar Anna, C. N. Annadurai was the former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and the Founder of DMK, the party which unseated Congress from power in Tamil Nadu in 1967, and the state remains out of reach of the national parties ever since. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 122.4 (2001) 533-565 [Access article in PDF] Rome Personified, Rome Epitomized: Representations of Rome in the Poetry of the Early Fifth Century Michael Roberts The last years of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century (the reigns of Theodosius and his sons) mark a crucial stage in the Christianization of Rome. 1 The hold of the city and all it stood for on (...) the imagination of the ruling classes was as strong as ever. But Theodosian legislation had definitively established the dominance of Christianity in the empire, and even in Rome the aristocracy was becoming progressively more Christian. 2 These changing circumstances find expression in the way Rome was represented in contemporary literature. While still indebted to the traditional language of the laudes Romae and to well-established literary traditions, the authors of the period find new ways to inflect the image of Rome that mirror their differing religious and cultural allegiances.Three poets make the largest contributions to that evolution in the representation of Rome. Claudius Claudianus was born in Alexandria (c. 370) but came to Rome in 394. His first Latin poem celebrated the consuls of 395, Probinus and Olybrius, but thereafter most of his poems served the interests of his patron and the emperor Honorius' chief minister, the Vandal general Stilicho. Of particular importance for the representation of Rome are his consular panegyrics, for the consulships of Honorius (396, 398, and 404) and Stilicho (400), and his two historical epics on the campaigns against the African warlord Gildo (De bello Gildonico 398) and against Alaric in 401-402 (De bello Getico 402). Claudian wrote his last dated poem in 404. Nothing is heard of him after that date and it is likely he died soon thereafter.Claudian's Christian contemporary, Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, was born, according to the verse preface he wrote to his collected works, in 348. After a successful career in the imperial administration, he [End Page 533] withdrew from public life to devote his poetic talents to the service of God. Two works are especially relevant to the representation of Rome, the Contra Symmachum, in two books, completed in 402 or early 403, though book 1 may have been written earlier, and the Peristephanon, a collection of poems on the martyrs, including the Roman martyrs Lawrence (Perist. 2), Hippolytus (Perist. 11), Peter and Paul (Perist. 12), and Agnes (Perist. 14). Peristephanon 9 and 11 refer to a journey the poet took to Rome, generally dated to 401/402, but it is quite possible that this was not his first trip to the capital. 3The third poet, Rutilius Namatianus, a traditionally minded pagan, was praefectus urbi in 414. His poem, the De reditu suo, which does not survive in its entirety, describes his return from Rome to his native Gaul in 417. 4 It is haunted by the destruction caused in northern Italy and Gaul by the recent barbarian invasions, but it begins with an extended paean of praise to Rome, the eternal city, which always grows stronger by its reverses. Rutilius' patriotic devotion to the city and the idea of Rome provides an optimistic counterpoint to the evidence of destruction and desolation that runs as a leitmotif through the poem.Rome figures in the three poets in two guises. It may appear personified as a woman, whose attributes index the power and status of the city and empire as well as the contemporary circumstances of the Roman state. 5 As an alternative to this metaphorical representation of Rome, the city may be encapsulated by certain, especially charged details of topography, in an epitome of its urban geography that stands in a metonymic (or synecdochic) relationship to the city as a whole. Thus, to take an example from a later period, when Paulinus of Pella came at an advanced age to write his life story in the Eucharisticos, he mentions a trip that he took to Rome in the company of his parents in a.d. 379. At the time he was not... (shrink)

The aim is to contribute to a better understanding of Samuel Pufendorf’s road from his early Elementa jurisprudentiae universalis, published in late 1660 to the eight ‘books’ of De jure naturae et gentium from 1672. In the latter, Pufendorf completed a methodical shift from the more geometrico method to a universal jurisprudence based upon a wide range of humanistic arts, including history. In this connection, Pufendorf gave more credit to Hugo Grotius and his De jure belli ac pacis than in (...) the earlier work. The paper redefines the role that Pufendorf’s contacts with the Chief Minister from Mainz, Johann Christian von Boineburg and his closest collaborators, Hermann Conring and Johann Heinrich Boecler played in Pufendorf’s shift of approach to ‘universal jurisprudence’. Hitherto underexplored correspondence of Boineburg with Boecler permits a reconstruction of the polemic that Boineburg incited and fuelled between Pufendorf and Boecler. Pufendorf’s reflections of the events in the Preface of the first edition of De jure naturae et gentium and later Christian Thomasius’s account in Paulo plenior, historia juris naturalis made the intermezzo into an essential part of the foundation myth of modern natural law. (shrink)

Beilin was a former chief negotiator for the Israeli government in the Oslo process at Camp David and Taba. He brings a valuable contribution to this volume as a practitioner and political scientist involved directly in conflict negotiations. After fulfilling his post as the Minister of Justice for the Israeli government, he became one of the lead Israeli representatives in the Geneva Accord negotiations. In this sceptical work, Beilin points to the possible dangers of speaking about the combined (...) concepts of justice and peace, believing that there cannot be one without the other. Peace treaties have often been signed and implemented by the victors of conflict, but have left the population on either side out of the determinations of justice. Beilin presents a history filled with examples in which political leaders have bypassed opportunities for peace because they did not deem the conditions just, and thus perpetuated conflict with untold costs. (shrink)

Thomas Cromwell, chief architect of the English Reformation, served as minister of Henry VIII from 1531 to 1540, the period during which more political and religious reform was accomplished than at any other time in Henry's thirty-seven-year reign. This biography_the first in a generation and the only one now in print_looks at his work and achievements during this period, and includes earlier and more critical assessments that view Cromwell as a disciple of Machiavelli.

In this issue, the founder of the Donetsk regional branch of the Ukrainian Association of Religious Studies, theologian, candidate of historical sciences, senior researcher of the Department of Religious Studies of the GS Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, President of the Center for Religious Studies member of the Expert Council on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations under the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, member of the Strategic Council under the Minister of (...) Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine. I. Kozlovsky worked for more than 25 years in the Donetsk Regional State Administration as a chief specialist and head of the department for religions, in the early 1990s he established the College of Religious Studies at Donetsk Open University, which was later transformed into the Faculty of Philosophy and Religious Studies of the State University of Information. intelligence, and has done much to promote interfaith and interreligious dialogue and cooperation in the Donetsk region, whose religious map is very diverse. At the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war, I. Kozlovsky became one of the organizers of the interfaith prayer marathon "Prayer for Ukraine", which took place in Donetsk from early March to November 2014, which was attended by members of the Donetsk branch of the UAR. Until 2016, some members of the UAR, led by I. Kozlovsky, who still remained in the occupied territories, collected data on the state of religious freedom in Donetsk and the region. In 2016, I. Kozlovsky was imprisoned by a terrorist group of the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic" and was held captive for almost 2 years. (shrink)

In this foundational study, originally published in 1880, Heinrich Kihn, professor of theology at Würzburg, compared the exegetical work of two significant figures in late antiquity. Theodore, born at Antioch and a friend of John Chrysostom, was an influential bishop of Mopsuestia from 392 to 428. His work was widely regarded as heretical in the centuries following his death. A century later Junillus Africanus served as chief legal minister to the Byzantine emperor Justinian and wrote a handbook of (...) biblical exegesis that became important in the medieval Latin West. Kihn argued that Junillus' Instituta, the text of which he included in this study, showed the direct influence of Theodore's writings. All subsequent scholarly work on Junillus, and much on Theodore, depends on Kihn's edition and analysis, even when disagreeing with important aspects of his interpretation. This indispensable but hard-to-find work is now reissued in its entirety. (shrink)

This article explores the nature and theoretical import of a hitherto neglected class of fictions which we term ‘self-involving interactive fictions’. SIIFs are interactive fictions, but they differ from standard examples of interactive fictions by being, in some important sense, about those who consume them. In order to better understand the nature of SIIFs, and the ways in which they differ from other fictions, we focus primarily on the most prominent example of the category: video-game fictions. We argue that appreciating (...) the self-involving nature of video-game fictions is key to understanding various otherwise puzzling phenomena concerning the ways in which consumers respond to them. Video-game fictions are, however, far from being the only extant example of this class; and we suggest that the recent philosophical interest in video games would be better focused on the wider class of self-involving interactive fictions. (shrink)

In 1728, when the sixteen-year-old Hume, still apparently ‘at college’, was beginning, all unknown to his family, to turn his attention to philosophy, Edinburgh and Glasgow were swarming with earnest metaphysicians, many of them not much older than Hume himself. ‘It is well known’, the Ochtertyre papers relate, ‘that between the years 1723 and 1740 nothing was in more request with the Edinburgh literati, both laical and clerical, than metaphysical disquisitions’, and Locke, Clarke, Butler and Berkeley are mentioned as the (...) chief subjects for debate. Moreover, it is clear enough from the records that this surge of intellectual interests was chiefly the work of a younger generation, wearied alike of Calvinist theology and of Jacobite politics. Indeed to begin with it was the students’ societies which took the lead, and a plain enough hint of their serious critical attack is given in one sour entry in the diary of the Calvinist minister Woodrow for 1726. ‘These student clubs are like to have a very ill influence; they declare against reading and cry up thinking.’. (shrink)

Intentional rounding, a process involving the performance of regular checks on all patients following a standardised protocol, is being introduced widely in the United Kingdom. The process has been promoted by the Prime Minister and publicised by the Chief Nursing Officer at the Department of Health as well as by influential think tanks and individual National Health Service organisations. An evidence base is offered in justification. This article subjects the evidence base to critical scrutiny concluding that it consists (...) of poor quality studies and serial misreporting of findings and a failure to consider wider concerns, including transference of evidence to differing health-care systems, and the conflation of perception and quality of care. Political promotion and wide implementation of intentional rounding despite the flimsy and questionable evidence base raise questions about the use of evidence in ethical nursing practice and the status of nursing as an autonomous profession. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article examines the discursive practices of coercive persuasion deployed by Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Communications to justify the rebranding Nigeria campaign as a policy designed for value reorientation of the citizenry in the wake of the country’s image crisis both domestically and internationally. Sampling data from select addresses and interviews of the country’s chief image maker during the campaign, the study analyses some discourse structures and strategies in the public discourse, drawing theoretical insights from van (...) Dijk’s Critical Epistemic Discourse Analysis to re-examine and re-interpret meaning in relation to knowledge claims in the organised persuasive communication. The article demonstrates that there is artful management of information and construction of knowledge in the persuasive discourse largely to present an institutional version of reality in re/telling Nigeria’s national identity narratives. The study concludes that the rhetorical means of controlling the discourse and managing the minds of the audience typify leadership practices of knowledge construction to achieve policy dominance given certain norms and conventions of nation branding practices. (shrink)

The idea of a purgatorial journey to the Ten Kings of the Ten Hells is a distinctive feature of funerals and ancestral worship in Chinese Buddhism and Chinese popular religions. In Indian Buddhism ideas emerged of chief deities presiding over others in a few of many heavens and of various hells with different tortures governed by Yama and his messengers, yet the idea that each hell was governed by a ‘king’ is not found in early Indian Buddhist sources. This (...) article examines what is probably the earliest enumeration of hell-kings, in the S?tra on Questions on Hells. This very early example derives from an extraordinary story about how King Bimbis?ra and his eighteen ministers became Yama and kings of eighteen hells after a disastrous defeat in battle. My analysis will illustrate how this account was probably consciously formulated by an author familiar with two sources: the story of the Buddha’s concern about the fate of his followers in the Shenisha jing, and the popular Chinese belief in sacrificial cults of ‘defeated armies and dead generals’. (shrink)

On April 5 2000, the Diet elected Yoshiro Mori as Japan's 55th prime minister. His predecessor, Keizo Obuchi, had suffered a stroke and became unable to carry out his official responsibility. Mori, who was the former Secretary General of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), inherited the three party coalition between the LDP, the new Komei Party and the Conservative Party, and reappointed all of Obuchi's cabinet members. Yohei Kono was reposted as the Minister of Foreign Affairs; Hideo (...) Usui as Justice; Kiichi Miyazawa as Finance; Hirofumi Nakasone as Education, Science and Technology; Yuya Niwa as Health and Welfare; Tokuichiro Tanazawa as Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries; Takeshi Fukaya as International Trade and Industry; Toshihiro Nikai as Transport; Eita Yashiro as Posts and Telecommunications; Takamori Makino as Labor; Masaaki Nakayama as Construction; Kosuke Hori as Home Affairs, Mikio Aoki as Chief Cabinet Secretary; Kunihiro Tsuzuki as Management and Coordination; Tsutomu Kawara as Defense; Taichi Sakaiya as Economic Planning; Kayoko Shimizu as environment; and Sadakazu Tanigaki as Financial Reconstruction. (shrink)

In Belgium, as in most countries, each Minister or Secretary is assisted by a limited number of trusted collaborators who constitute the Ministerial Office.The article is an attempt to shed a light on the Chief Ministerial Officer who is the closest collaborator of the Minister.In order to show the role of the Chief Ministerial Officer, the article first describes the tasks, powers and composition of the Ministerial Office to proceed to a more extensive analysis of the (...) functions, the appointment of the Chief Ministerial Officer, and the question whether he can exercise executive power.The most important tasks of the Chief Ministerial Officer are: organization and coordination of the Office and its activities, acting as a «Liaison-Officer» with the Minister, passing on of information, exercising of a form of internal, political and administrative control.The article closes with some more personal remarks, pointing out a few guidelines which a Chief Ministerial Office, should keep in mind. (shrink)

This is the first major study of Michel Foucault as a political thinker. Written in clear prose, Foucault and the Political explores the ramifications for political theory of the whole range of Foucault's writing, including materials only recently made available. Jon Simons argues that Foucault's work is animated by a tension between his presentation of modern life as "unbearably heavy" and his temptation to escape its limitations by aiming for "unbearable lightness." Through expositions of Foucault's ideas on power/knowledge, subjectification, governmentality, (...) political rationality and the aesthetics of existence, Simons demonstrates how Foucault resists both extremes. Foucault's thought entails an ethic of permanent resistance, best embodied in radical democracy. Simons relates Foucault's work both to contemporary political thinkers, such as Michael Walzer, Charles Taylor and Jurgen Habermas, as well as to scholars challenging conventional political categories, especially feminist and gay theorists such as Judith Butler. (shrink)

Ageism has unfortunately become a salient phenomenon during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, triage decisions based on age have been hotly discussed. In this article, I first defend that, although there are ethical reasons (founded on the principles of benefit and fairness) to consider the age of patients in triage dilemmas, using age as a categorical exclusion is an unjustifiable ageist practice. Then, I argue that ageism during the pandemic has been fueled by media narratives and unfair assumptions which have (...) led to an ethically problematic group homogenization of the older population. Finally, I conclude that an intersectional perspective can shed light on further controversies on ageism and triage in the post-pandemic future. (shrink)

Although he is best known as the founder of pragmatism, the name that Charles Sanders Peirce prefers to use for his comprehensive system of thought is "synechism" because the principle of continuity is its central thesis. This paper arranges and summarizes numerous quotations and citations from his voluminous writings to formalize and explicate his distinctive mathematical conceptions of hyperbolic and topical continuity, both of which are derived from the direct observation of time as their paradigmatic manifestation, and then apply them (...) in normative science and metaphysics, especially logic as semeiotic and cosmology. The resulting conclusion is that the intelligibility of the universe is plausibly explained by conceiving it as one immense sign, a vast inferential process: a semiosic continuum whose connected constituent signs are indefinite until deliberately marked off, with God the Creator as its overall dynamical object in the infinite past and God completely revealed as its overall final interpretant in the infinite future. (shrink)

Grounding is bicollective if it is possible for some truths δ,δ,... to be grounded in the some truths γ,γ,... without its being the case that each δi is grounded in some subcollection of γ,γ,.... In this paper I show how to do develop a hypergraph-theoretic account of bicollective ground, taking the notion of immediate ground as basic. I also indicate how bicollective ground helps with formulating mathematical structuralism.

On July 12, 2006, the Hezbollah terrorist organization attacked two Israeli Defense Forces' armored Hummer jeeps patrolling along the border with gunfire and explosives, in the midst of massive shelling attacks on Israel's north. Three soldiers were killed in the attack and two were taken hostage. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) began heavy artillery and tank fire. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert convened the government on Wednesday night, June 12, 2006 to decide Israel's reaction. The government agreed that the attack (...) had created a completely new situation on the northern border, and that Israel must take steps that will "exact a price", and restore its deterrence. The Israeli-Hezbollah War had started after one rushed and short governmental meeting, without realizing the full implications of the decision. The war ended on August 14, 2006 when the UN Security Council Resolution (no. 1701) entered into force. During the war, voices of protest were heard in Israel, mainly from reserve service soldiers, journalists, and distinguished writers. After the war, thousands of people have criticized the government decisions, demanded the establishment of a national inquiry committee to investigate the war events and, called for the resignation of the war architects: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Minister of Defence Amir Peretz, and Chief of Staff Dan Halutz. This article criticizes the establishment of the committee and the results it reached, arguing that it was a "sold game": The person under investigation should never be allowed to nominate his judges. This is mockery of justice, and travesty of social responsibility. (shrink)

Asian Bioethics Conference (ABC20) was held on 22-25 Nov. 2019 at DGHS (Directorate General of Health Services) auditorium, Mohakhali and NEC (National Election Commission) Auditorium, Agargoan, Dhaka. Conference was organized by Bangladesh Bioethics Society (BBS) in cooperation of DGHS, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare; Social Science Research Council Bangladesh, Ministry of Planning; Bangladesh Medical Research Council, Mohakhali Dhaka; Asian Bioethics Association (ABA) and Eubios Ethics Institute, Thailand, New Zealand’s and Japan. Mr MA Mannan MP, Honorable Planning Minister, Government (...) of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh was the Chief Guest. Dr. Md. Murad Hassan MP, Honorable State Minister, Ministry of Information, Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh was present as Special Guest. Md. Nurul Amin, Secretary, Planning Division, Ministry of Planning and Dr Iqbal Kabir, Director, Planning, Monitoring, & Research and Coordinator, DGHS were also present as Special Guests. Bioethics promotes strong ethical values, practice of ethics and morality in Science, Social Science, Commerce and Arts. The conference brought together scholars and policy makers from different disciplines from all around the world to discuss and deliberate the latest issues of bioethics in biomedicine, biotechnology, science, social science, education and research. Around 300 participants from different universities and government officials including 40 foreign delegates from Asia & Pacific and beyond were present at the conference. (shrink)

The mechanistic and causal accounts of explanation are often conflated to yield a ‘causal-mechanical’ account. This paper prizes them apart and asks: if the mechanistic account is correct, how can causal explanations be explanatory? The answer to this question varies according to how causality itself is understood. It is argued that difference-making, mechanistic, dualist and inferentialist accounts of causality all struggle to yield explanatory causal explanations, but that an epistemic account of causality is more promising in this regard.

Machamer, Darden and Craver: ‘Mechanisms are entities and activities organized such that they are productive of regular changes from start or set-up to finish or termination conditions.’ (Machamer, Darden and Craver 2000 p3.) Glennan: ‘A mechanism for a behavior is a complex system that produces that behavior by the interaction of a number of parts, where the interactions between parts can be characterized by direct, invariant, change-relating generalizations.’ (Glennan 2002b pS344.) Bechtel and Abrahamsen: ‘A mechanism is a structure performing a (...) function in virtue of its component parts, component operations, and their organization. The orchestrated functioning of the mechanism is responsible for one or more phenomena.’ (Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2005 p423.). (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to reveal philosophical ideas in the mythology and folklore of the indigenous peoples of North America. An important question: "Can we assume that the spiritual culture of the American Indians contained philosophical knowledge?" remains relevant today. For example, European philosophy is defined by appeals to philosophers of the past, their texts. The philosophical tradition is characterized by rational argumentation and formulation of philosophical questions that differ from the questions of ordinary language. However, the problem (...) lies in the term "philosophy", which belongs to the so-called "philosophical untranslatability" and has many definitions. The question of whether philosophy is exclusively a phenomenon of European culture is still controversial. In the article, the concept of philosophy is used in a broad sense, which allows the analysis of the intellectual heritage of the culture of the indigenous people of North America for philosophical ideas. Theoretical basis of the study consists of primary sources, which are limited due to the "documentary horizon". It contains myths about the Twins, ritual rhetoric, examples of dream interpretation practices and the practical wisdom of tribal chiefs. The Chronicle of "Vallamolum", or "the Red List", testifies to the special idea of the Indians about history and their own historicity. Analysis of cosmogonical and cosmological ideas reveals the special features of the anthropological ideas of the North American Indians. Combined with the philosophical ideas of the Puritan philosophy of the settlers of New England, this analysis allows us to explore in more detail the processes of acculturation. The study uses critical literature from scholars and leading researchers of the wisdom and philosophy of Native Americans, such as Michael Yellow Bird, J. Baird Callicott, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dennis H. McPherson, Lewis Henri Morgan, Thomas M. Norton-Smith, J. Douglas Rabb, Paul Radin, Jon Ewbank Manchip White. The views of early American philosophers: R. Williams, W. Penn, R. W. Emerson, on the problem of the relationship between the culture of settlers and the indigenous people of North America are noteworthy. Originality lies in the application of historical and philosophical methodology, identifying the features of philosophizing in the spiritual culture and worldview of the indigenous people of North America. Conclusions. In the conclusions, the obtained results complement the history of the origin and development of philosophical thought of the early American philosophy. (shrink)

Pervez Musharraf was the thirteenth Chief of the Army staff and tenth president of Pakistan. In October 1999, he took over as a Chief Executive of Pakistan by dismissing then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Military takeover was savored by the people of Pakistan due to bad governance of democratic Governments. Unlike the former dictator Gen Zia ul Haq, Gen. Pervez Musharraf gave the impression of being secular and liberal. He was an ardent admirer of Mustafa Kamal Ataturk (...) and wanted to establish Turkish Model of democracy in Pakistan. To delink Islam from extremism and fundamentalism, he introduced the strategy of “enlightened moderation” which has been discussed in this paper. Many Pakistanis welcomed his policy of “enlightened moderation” and even OIC acknowledged his approach. He worked sincerely to uplift the status of women in the society. He also led the army in the war against terrorism and launched operation against militants who were challenging the writ of the Government. The economy of Pakistan was at its peak and poverty graph was declining in Pakistan during his period when many sociological changes in the country took place. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sozzini’s Ghost: Pierre Bayle and Socinian TolerationBarbara Sher TinsleyPierre Bayle’s Philosophical Commentary (1686–87), a Huguenot exile’s response to the Revocation of Nantes, established its author as a defender of free conscience for pagans, Muslims, Jews, atheists, Catholics, Protestants, Anabaptists, and Socinians. 1 The virtues of Pagans and Atheists are most fully treated in Bayle’s work on the comet. 2 In this work pagans, Catholics (whom Bayle equated with pagan (...) idolators), and atheists were compared to the advantage of the latter, a conclusion that caused widespread scandal and for which Bayle was obliged by his church to write an apology or clarification found in his Dictionary. 3 In toleration there was no juste milieu. 4 Everyone must act according to conscience no matter how errant. Bayle reiterated a position taken in his criticism of the Jesuit Louis Maimbourg’s History of Calvinism. 5 In it Bayle first enunciated the principle that he noted frightened readers and caused a scandal, namely, that error disguised as truth must be allowed all the privileges of truth, i.e., must be permitted to be believed by those convinced they had found truth. This doctrine of errant conscience was basic to Bayle’s understanding of God and man’s search for Him; and after his death it became basic to concepts of individualism, free [End Page 609] inquiry, free speech, and inalienable rights, concepts which were all made concrete during the Enlightenment. Forcing conscience was wrong. 6Bayle’s lack of partisanship in treating religious history invited criticism from Calvinists in Holland. He wrote to Mr. Pecher, a minister at Emmerick, that in his Dictionary he had avoided passionate prejudice with respect to Jesuits or to any other subject. 7 But had he also avoided an indifference to dogma? Not according to his chief critic who was his erstwhile patron turned enemy, Pierre Jurieu, Pastor of the Reformed church of Rotterdam and theologian in the Ecole Illustre. This school, founded expressly for Bayle and Jurieu by the city council of Rotterdam, 8 allowed Bayle to teach philosophy and history. Since Jurieu thought Bayle “indifferent” to dogma, he believed him to be a covert Socinian or atheist. In 1693 he managed to have Bayle dismissed from his teaching post.Indifference was a concept that started with the ancients, particularly Stoics, Skeptics, and Cynics, who regarded everything except virtue as matters of indifference, a posture with which many of Bayle’s writings, though not all, seemed to agree. In scholastic logic indifferentism meant that things were neither particular nor universal but indifferently so according to the viewpoint from which they were regarded. Jurieu made the charge of indifferentism in 1687. 9 He remarked then of Bayle’s concept of the erring conscience that it was “developed with a view to establishing tolerance and a general indifference of all sects and even of all religions.” 10 Bayle was not indifferent to doctrine. He remained loyal to the Reformed faith, defended orthodoxy, and in a letter to his cousin protested that he was ready to show that his work on comets contained nothing that was contrary to right reason, Scripture, or the Confession of faith of the Reformed Church. 11 Paul Dibon noted that Bayle was especially consistent in his concern for divine transcendance rather than indifference. 12 Henry Kamen wrote that Bayle wrote in “complete theological indifference,” 13 a statement ignoring Bayle’s disapproval of much theological heterodoxy, the orthodoxy of others. While Bayle was usually non-partisan, he was never indifferent. Kamen’s remark contrasts [End Page 610] with Theodore Rabb’s, who wrote that Jean Bodin and Bayle took their stand on “the equality of all beliefs” 14 a statement suggesting indifference, but in a positive rather than negative way.Bodin’s own religion was particularly problematic. Tolerant for his age, a whole century before Bayle, Bodin, a Carmelite friar for several years, had already repudiated forcing conscience. In his book on the state he warned that those who do so merely create more intransigence among their already alienated subjects. 15 He also insinuated that a multiplicity of religions—“all the religions of all people”—including natural religion, Jupiter’s... (shrink)

In this chapter we explore the process of extrapolating causal claims from model organisms to humans in pharmacology. We describe and compare four strategies of extrapolation: enumerative induction, comparative process tracing, phylogenetic reasoning, and robustness reasoning. We argue that evidence of mechanisms plays a crucial role in several strategies for extrapolation and in the underlying logic of extrapolation: the more directly a strategy establishes mechanistic similarities between a model and humans, the more reliable the extrapolation. We present case studies from (...) the research on atherosclerosis and the development of statins, that illustrate these strategies and the role of mechanistic evidence in extrapolation. (shrink)

This article uses concepts from sociology, history, and philosophy to explore the shifting relationship between moral values and business in the Western world. We examine the historical roots and intellectual underpinnings of two major business-society paradigms in ideal-type terms. In pre-industrial Western society, we argue that business activity was linked to society’s values of morality (the moral unity paradigm}-for good or for ill. With the rise of industrialism, we contend that business was freed from moral constraints by the alleged “invisible (...) hand” of efficient markets (the amoral theory of business). Armed with this understanding of the intellectual history of the moral unity and amoral business-society paradigms, we suggest that some variant of the moral unity paradigm may be recurring in post-industrial society. (shrink)

Dear Editor, -/- One of the recent changes in the UK cabinet, after Liz Truss became the Prime Minister, was that Dr Therese Coffey become the new Health Secretary. Some news outlets were quick to point out her anti-abortion stance (see e.g. (1–3)) and that this, according to them, might be a problem. While pro-lifers might not completely rejoice over this situation as Coffey stated that ‘she wouldn’t “seek to undo” abortion laws’(3), I do not wish to focus here (...) on speculating on the future status of UK abortion legislation. Rather, I wish to focus on some statements quoted by the media as made by Clare Murphy, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), who stated that: (2,4) -/- ‘Earlier this year, our new Health Secretary voted to revoke access to at-home abortion care, and recriminalise women who end their own pregnancies without the approval of two doctors.’ ‘In doing so, Therese Coffey voted against the advice of leading medical bodies.’ ‘To have a health secretary who would place their personal beliefs above expert clinical guidance is deeply concerning.’ -/- Coffey is a Catholic, and this brings back to mind some of the aspects of the debate surrounding conflicts of interest in bioethics. There have been, for example, discussions and proposals that having a religious belief should be declared as a conflict of interest.(5,6) But something seems to be missing in these portrayals of conflict of interest and the disagreement between Coffey and these ‘leading medical bodies’. If we regard financial conflicts of interests as the classical case of such conflicts that is used as a reference to other types of conflicts of interest,(5,6) then why do we not see the media complaining that ‘leading medical bodies’ support procedures that will give them more work oppor-tunities and improve their financial stability? To paraphrase Murphy who (according to the BBC 'said while politicians were entitled to their own views on abortion, what mattered was whether their "personal convictions stand in the way of women's ability to act on their own”. (4) perhaps ‘BPAS and the leading medical bodies are entitled to considerations of their financial interests, but what matters is whether the advice they give is clinically sound and founded in the principles of ethical clinical practice. In Matthew 6:24 Our Lord said that one cannot serve two masters, so perhaps we should not be so concerned with Coffey consulting her conscience, but rather scrutinise clinical institutions. (shrink)

Jon Roffe shows how Empiricism and Subjectivity is the precursor for some of Deleuze's most well-known philosophical innovations. For those already familiar with Deleuze, he emphasises its novelty within his corpus. And, for all readers, he shows how it outlines Deleuze's powerful and striking theory of subjectivity, and of philosophy itself. Empiricism and Subjectivity is Gilles Deleuze's first book, and yet it is infrequently read and poorly understood. In fact, it constitutes a unique project in its own right, deserving of (...) the same close study that is now widely given to other, more well-known works. (shrink)

Public accusations of corruption leveled against public figures and institutions in Jordan have recently become a prominent feature of public discourse in the country. Informed by positioning theory as an analytical framework, this study focuses on public responses to such accusations through a discourse analysis of two major apologetic statements, or apologiae, issued in Jordan in 2018 and 2019: one by a controversial former royal court chief and minister of planning in response to public accusations of corruption and (...) appropriation of public funds, and the other by the Office of Queen Rania of Jordan in response to accusations of wardrobe extravagance and overspending. The analysis shows that these two apologiae employed discourses that not only positioned the accused as blameless, but also as victims of defamation. Reference to one’s history, such as public service to the nation and one’s accomplishments, was exploited. In contrast, the accusers were explicitly or implicitly positioned as unjust, biased, vindictive, or motivated by hidden agenda. A variety of discursive strategies were deployed, particularly invoking cultural moral orders, resorting to banal nationalism, expressing pride in one’s public service and allegiance to the monarchy, and invoking a constellation of religious, professional and national identities. In the case of the royal apologia, it was implicitly positioned in western discourses, such as invoking feminine ‘corporeal modernity’, to respond to the wardrobe overspending accusations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Oldest and Most Respected Uniform in the World1Zelig R. Weinstein“And all the peoples of the earth shall see that the name of the LORD is called upon thee; and they shall be afraid of thee.”(Deuteronomy 28:10)Rabbi Eliezer the Great says that this verse alludes to the Tefillin Shel Rosh, the small leather box containing Biblical verses that are worn by Jewish men on their head. During Talmudic times (...) and for centuries after, devout Jewish men would wear Tefillin the entire day. This practice is now only rarely seen. Since the 1960s, there has been a resurgence of public display of one’s adherence to traditional Jewish practices. It is increasingly common to see Jewish men wearing a yarmulke at work and in public spheres. There are perhaps thousands of Jewish doctors who don’t hesitate to wear their yarmulke in their places of practice–hospital, clinic, private practice.In the 1980s I joined the staff of the Department of Radiology at the Bethesda Naval Hospital as the Director of Neuroradiology and Interventional Radiology. As the hospital’s Neuroradiologist I presented the radiological findings for the cases presented at the bimonthly “brain cutting” sessions. These sessions were well attended by staff, residents and medical students from the Departments of Neurosurgery, Neurology, Neuropathology and Radiology. I was the only traditional Orthodox Jew at the hospital, clearly recognizable as such by the yarmulke I always wore (very unusual in the early 1980s). My yarmulke would provoke occasional good–natured kidding particularly from the neurosurgery staff and residents. [End Page 212]During one of these sessions, kidding about my yarmulke from a small group of residents was reaching a crescendo. The kidding came to a sudden halt when the Chief Resident of Neuro-surgery, a born and bred Louisianan, demanded everyone’s attention. When it quieted down he very sternly ordered everyone to carefully look at their uniforms. Everyone seemed perplexed but all followed suit. Almost a half–minute passed before the Chief Resident, with his thick Southern drawl, spoke. “Our [naval] uniforms are, at most, a couple of hundred years old.” He then pointed toward my yarmulke and said: “Dr. Weinstein’s uniform is thousands of years old and a lot more respected than our uniforms.”This was my initiation into the alluring, usually positive and unexpected fascination and respect that my obvious religiosity had on my patients, their families and my many colleagues during the almost seven years I spent at Bethesda.The story I will tell is very poignant. It involved the family of one of the most senior Chief Petty Officers of the United States Navy.Late one Sunday evening, I received a call from the Chief Resident, Dr. Steve Henning, informing me that the family matriarch had been admitted to Bethesda with relatively acute onset of significant neurological findings. The emergent workup confirmed the presence of a large mass, a meningioma, of the frontal lobe region with significant surrounding edema and mass effect. Neurosurgery requested embolization of the feeding vessels prior to surgery. The interventional procedure and possible serious complications were fully explained to the patient, her husband and her two daughters. Consent was signed and early Monday morning the patient was brought to Special Procedures to have the tumor embolized.Prior to the procedure I introduced myself to the patient’s family and spoke to them about the procedure. The patient’s husband and two daughters, one of whom was an active duty Navy nurse the other a minister of a fundamentalist church in the South, were very attentive and expressed concern about the procedure and its outcome. I tried to reassure them and told them I would speak to them during and after the procedure.All went well. Medically, the patient did well during and after the procedure. She was discharged from our care to neurosurgery. The patient and her family thanked us.After the patient left the Special Procedures area the Chief Technologist, Al, approached me and very cryptically asked if I was aware of what happened when the Chief Resident, Dr. Henning, spoke with the patient and family the night before. I was puzzled and replied, no. He... (shrink)

Objective Bayesian probability is often defined over rather simple domains, e.g., finite event spaces or propositional languages. This paper investigates the extension of objective Bayesianism to first-order logical languages. It is argued that the objective Bayesian should choose a probability function, from all those that satisfy constraints imposed by background knowledge, that is closest to a particular frequency-induced probability function which generalises the λ = 0 function of Carnap’s continuum of inductive methods.