Philosophy of Tsong-kha-pa Blo-bzang-grags-pa's Lam rim chen mo.

In a series of recent papers, Jonathan Schaffer presents a novel framework for understanding grounding. Metaphysical laws play a central role. In addition, Schaffer argues that, contrary to what many have thought, there is no special 'explanatory gap' between consciousness and the physical world. Instead, explanatory gaps are everywhere. I draw out and criticize the methodology for metaphysics implicit in Schaffer's presentation. In addition, I argue that even if we accept Schaffer's picture, there remains a residual explanatory gap between consciousness (...) and the physical. The residual gap does most of the same philosophical work as the original. Schaffer has introduced a troublesome metaphysical methodology that fails to follow through on its biggest promise: to deflate the explanatory gap. (shrink)

"This book deals with various issues related but not limited to the use of social media by the youths, influence of mediated violence on children/youths, communication policy and youth development. Other important themes you could reference in this book are child rights issues, advertising and children, sexual content and the exploitation of vulnerable children, media role in encouraging and curbing anti-social behaviour amongst children/youths, a pervasive youth culture in the age of social media, and some theoretical arguments that support the (...) various positions."--page 4 of cover. (shrink)

We use a result due to Rolin, Speissegger, and Wilkie to show that definable sets in certain o-minimal structures admit definable parameterizations by mild maps. We then use this parameterization to prove a result on the density of rational points on curves defined by restricted Pfaffian functions.

Njik ka Amaka: Further Discussions on the Philosophy of Integrative Humanism (A Contribution to African and Intercultural Philosophies) presents philosophy from the view point of African thought system and logic. It presents African philosophy not as a reactionary to another brand of philosophy as is popularly the case among writers of African philosophy but as an unspoken, unstated rival of the positions of other philosophical traditions, with great emphasis on the importance of intercultural philosophizing. Somehow, the work manages to be (...) eclectic in welding orientations in the spirit of intercultural philosophy and it makes no pretense that it was written primarily for the contemporary lover of wisdom. The focal point which remains unwavering throughout was the further development of integrative humanism as a theory in African philosophy. The language style of this work was carefully knitted in simplistic and in some places bombastic forms. Simplistic to appeal to all class of readers and bombastic to demonstrate the emerging orientation that one way to hit back at the domineering colonial languages would be to speak them in deconstructive manner. The Englishness or the Frenchness of those colonial languages are in this book broken; traditional meanings of words are in some places altered to reflect the African senses; some other words are reshaped in various forms to reflect what the African has in mind and what he means; idioms are reinterpreted to reflect the unabashed and highest degree of indomitable Africanness; this is because a language that would bear forth African truths if it yet remains foreign can only emerge from the ruins of the one that bore Western truths. The benchmark of the theory of integrative humanism as a vanguard for intercultural philosophy is a passage from bivalent to trivalent mode of logical interpretation wherein the intermediate position is hoisted as the necessary missing link of reality. (shrink)

This article has a double purpose: to argue for some specific points on Cicero's rhythm, and to show how the significance of rhythm for literary understanding is larger than has perhaps been perceived. The piece is based on a reading of the whole of Cicero; but it will make only occasional reference to the letters. The question of rhythm in the letters is particularly involved, and it will be best handled elsewhere.

For this, the second of four volumes comprising the papers submitted for publication by the invited participants to the Fifth International Congress of Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, held at the University of Western Ontario in 1975, the editors have selected papers concerned with "foundational problems" in the physical sciences, biology, psychology, and the social sciences. In spite of the wide range of papers included in the volume, the reader never learns exactly what constitutes a foundational problem in the (...) philosophy of science. Would it be reasonable to suppose that foundational problems focus upon the basic logical, epistemological, and metaphysical issues posed by the special sciences, to the exclusion of purely methodological and strictly historical issues? In fact, the contributions to this volume cover the entire scope of metaphysical, epistemological, logical, methodological, historical, and quasi-historical questions that are conventionally classified under the philosophy of science in contemporary academic discourse. There are essays on the genesis of the universe, the methodology of physics, and quantum mechanics; essays on various topics in the philosophy of biology—including the ontological status of species, theories and observation in developmental biology, determinism and teleology, and genetic information; essays on problems in the philosophy of psychology-including consciousness and the brain, causality and action, and methodological problems in the investigation of human activity; three essays on learning theory; and several essays on problems in the philosophy of social science—including methodology, axiological problems, and four papers on the concept of rationality which are principally concerned with J. Harsanyi’s researches on the contribution of Bayesian decision theory and recent developments in game theory to the understanding of rational behavior. (shrink)