In Chinese chi is the manifestation of the force that animates all of life. Harnessing and maximizing chi within ourselves is not only essential to our well-being, it is the key to living a truly balanced life in mind, spirit and body. This book, written by an International Tai Chi judge and Grand Master, is a wide-ranging guide to ancient Chinese practices to improve the flow of chi in our lives. This book shows readers how chi works and how to (...) enrich our energy flow through breathing, massage, meditation, diet and Feng Shui. Living Chi also includes a Tai Chi sequence - the Lotus - that will give readers a complete, revitalizing and yet gentle workout. As an important and authoritative guide to relaxation and revitalization, Living Chi works both for the beginner and more experienced student. At the same time, it is an important tool for anyone whose life, relationships, career are blocked - and for whom a rebalancing of the life force is essential. (shrink)

Qi (also spelled as Chi or Ki) is the universal energy or life force that permeates all beings. An understanding of Qi, a fundamental concept in traditional Chinese philosophy, is crucial to success in the practice of all East Asian healing and martial arts, from Tai Chi to Taekwondo and Reiki. But Qi has far broader and deeper applications: its proper understanding and utilization can bring harmony and balance to our modern lives. The power and focus it generates can be (...) put to use in the myriad tasks in which we engage daily, such as cooking, writing a book, designing a house, or preparing a business strategy. Reflections on Qi progresses from an explanation of what Qi is and how it is manifested throughout the universe to a description of how positive Qi can be introduced into the home, garden, workplace, and relationships. This is followed by an introduction to the various means of expressing and interpreting Qi in such pursuits as calligraphy, gardening, painting, and music. Lavishly illustrated, this book is the perfect reference for anyone interested in Eastern thought and wanting to incorporate its key beneficial elements into a Western lifestyle. (shrink)

Several recent authors have argued that children are subject to testimonial injustice in the same way as are women, Blacks, and several other social identity groups. Testimonial injustice is standardly conceptualized, following Miranda Fricker’s seminal account, as a wrongful credibility deficit. I argue that this concept of testimonial injustice is too narrow to capture testimonial injustice against children. There is good reason to think that children are less reliable testifiers than adults, so it is not necessarily wrong to assign a (...) credibility deficit to a child speaker, in the way it is wrong in the case of a female or black speaker. However, I argue that children are nevertheless subjected to testimonial injustice. Testimonial injustice against children is constituted primarily by a failure to actively inquire into assertions by children — that is, by a failure to patiently and reflectively engage in discourse with the child to discover what they may know. (shrink)

I attempt to define the concept of ‘living organism’. Intuitively, a living organism is a substantial entity with a capacity for certain relevant activities. But biology has discovered that living organisms have a particular compositional or microstructural nature. This nature includes carbon-based macromolecules and water molecules. I argue that such living organisms belong to a natural kind of compound physical object, viz., carbon-based living organism. My definition of a living organism encompasses both the intuitively relevant activities and the empirically discovered (...) compositional nature. The definition is designed to deal with a variety of problem cases, e.g., viruses, proteinoid microspheres, sterile organisms, suspended animation cases, and living parts of organisms. (shrink)

(2013). Two aspects of propositional unity. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 43, Essays on the Nature of Propositions, pp. 518-533.

Examines a range of issues related to the experience of close interpersonal friendship, including the nature of friendship and links between friendship and spirituality, ethics, and politics. Combines philosophical, religious, and social-scientific perspectives.

This paper discusses the controversy between philosophers of science (e.g. Grünbaum) and historians of science (e.g. Holton) regarding Einstein's discovery of STR. Although Holton is surely correct on the historical point that experimental results (especially the Michelson-Morley experiment) had little influence on Einstein's development of STR, this fact is not sufficient to establish his (and Polanyi's) claim that major scientific discoveries are primarily matters of private, nonspecifiable insights into physical reality. It is possible that Einstein's work was based primarily on (...) non-empirical but nonetheless publicly discussable, objective considerations. And a more comprehensive survey of the discovery of STR shows that this was indeed the case and thus excludes STR as a supporting instance of Holton's and Polanyi's assertions of the primacy of "private science.". (shrink)

I argue for an alternative to Quine’s conception of observation sentences, one that better satisfies the roles Quine envisages for them, and that otherwise respects Quinean constraints. After reviewing a certain predicament Quine got into in balancing the needs of the intersubjectivity of observation sentences with his notion of the stimulus meaning of an observation sentence, I push for replacing the latter with what I call the ‘stimulus field’ of an observation sentence, a notion that remains ‘proximate’ but is shared (...) between different language users. Throughout, I emphasize the epistemological role of observation sentences. (shrink)

The project of “religious epistemology,” as it has developed and thrived among certain analytic philosophers over the last thirty years, has seldom exhibited a strong historical sensibility. Nonetheless, contemporary discussions of the rationality of religious belief obviously have important antecedents in the history of modern philosophy, particularly in the history of the Enlightenment project that so strongly challenged traditional religious belief. This paper develops two themes from this history that I will try to show are particularly important for understanding contemporary (...) issues about the rationality of religious belief: the affirmation of ordinary life, and the question of radical evil in human nature. (shrink)

This article discusses issues relevant to recent efforts to increase veterinary reporting of cases of animal mistreatment in the USA. These issues include mandatory vs. voluntary reporting, client confidentiality obligations, the legal definitions of animal cruelty, abuse, and neglect in state laws, ethical conflicts between a veterinarian's obligations to animals and clients, perceived vs. real barriers to reporting, the circumstances under which a veterinarian is likely to encounter animal mistreatment in practice, and the lack of accepted diagnostic criteria for the (...) "battered pet.". (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Preliminaries Descriptions and Quantification Descriptions and Predication Conclusion.

We have Nietzsche to thank for some of the most important accomplishments in intellectual history, but as Gary Shapiro shows in this unique look at Nietzsche’s thought, the nineteenth-century philosopher actually anticipated some of the most pressing questions of our own era. Putting Nietzsche into conversation with contemporary philosophers such as Deleuze, Agamben, Foucault, Derrida, and others, Shapiro links Nietzsche’s powerful ideas to topics that are very much on the contemporary agenda: globalization, the nature of the livable earth, and (...) the geopolitical categories that characterize people and places. Shapiro explores Nietzsche’s rejection of historical inevitability and its idea of the end of history. He highlights Nietzsche’s prescient vision of today’s massive human mobility and his criticism of the nation state’s desperate efforts to sustain its exclusive rule by declaring emergencies and states of exception. Shapiro then explores Nietzsche’s vision of a transformed garden earth and the ways it sketches an aesthetic of the Anthropocene. He concludes with an explanation of the deep political structure of Nietzsche’s “philosophy of the Antichrist,” by relating it to traditional political theology. By triangulating Nietzsche between his time and ours, between Bismarck’s Germany and post-9/11 America, Nietzsche’s Earth invites readers to rethink not just the philosopher himself but the very direction of human history. (shrink)

How to argue about politics -- Science: a consumer's guide -- The philosophical limits of science -- The new atheism -- Religious agnosticism -- Happiness, work, and capitalism -- Capitalism and education -- Thinking about art -- Can we stop arguing about abortion?

This paper assesses Jurgen Habermas' reconstruction of Kant's cosmopolitan project suggesting ways in which this reconstruction creates new problems that were not part of Kant's endeavour as well as indicating critical appreciation of the idea of the project.

Introduction -- Newton's laws of motion versus nature's -- The continuity conundrum -- Continuity and linearity : confusion twice confounded -- From illusions of precision and reproducibility in natural science to delusions of normalcy in social science -- Mutability -- Laws of motion : natural law and questions of mutability -- Essential and intangible role of temporal factors : a detailed example -- Detaching Canada's East Coast Fishery from its history : causes and consequences -- Mishandling temporal factors : a (...) problem of method -- Social science and the problem of linearised time -- The dialectic of nature and its usefulness for the social sciences -- Placing Tlinear on life support -- Merchant's capital : key historic intangible of the East Coast Fishery -- The 800-pound gorilla. (shrink)

The Objective Threshold/Strategic Model proposes that strong, qualitative inferences of unconscious perception can be made if the relationship between perceptual sensitivity and stimulus visibility is nonlinear and nonmonotonic. The model proposes a nadir in priming effects at the objective identification threshold . These predictions were tested with masked semantic priming and repetition priming of a lexical decision task. The visibility of the prime stimuli was systematically varied above and below the objective identification threshold. The obtained relationship between prime visibility and (...) priming facilitation was nonlinear, but the results failed to confirm a nadir in priming effects at the objective identification threshold. We conclude that the objective identification threshold does not necessarily indicate the point where presumably unconscious priming effects might be inhibited by conscious cognitive processes. (shrink)

This is a book focused primarily on reading the *Critique of Judgment* but which takes the central topics of it to be central to understanding the Critical Philosophy generally. It distinguishes types of aesthetics and teleology and in the process suggests an ambitious reconstruction of the landscape of Kant's architectonic.

Is divorce reasonable, given that marital promises are often apparently unqualified? I explain a variety of ways in which one can take promises seriously and recognize the value of genuinely unqualified love in marriage while recognizing that it may be reasonable in particular cases to treat marital promises as non-binding.

Sam, your newborn son, has been suffocating in your arms for the past 15 minutes. You’re as certain as you can be that he is going to die in the next 15.

Davidson's paratactic account of indirect quotation preserves the apparent relational structure of indirect speech but without assuming, in the Fregean manner, that the thing said by a sayer is a proposition. I argue that this is a mistake. As has been recognised by some critics, Davidson's account suffers from analytical shortcomings which can be overcome by redeploying the paratactic strategy as a means of referring to propositions. I offer a quick and comprehensive survey of these difficulties and a concise propositional (...) solution. Further, I argue that Davidson's more general philosophical commitments provide no reason not to embrace the propositional strategy: despite appearances, to invoke propositions in the way suggested is consistent with Davidson's holism and consequent doctrine of semantic indeterminacy. (shrink)

Researchers in virtually every discipline rely on sophisticated proprietary software for their work. However, some researchers are unable to afford the licenses and instead procure the software illegally. We discuss the prohibition of software piracy by intellectual property laws, and argue that the moral basis for the copyright law offers the possibility of cases where software piracy may be morally justified. The ethics codes that scientific institutions abide by are informed by a rule-consequentialist logic: by preserving personal rights to authored (...) works, people able to do so will be incentivized to create. By showing that the law has this rule-consequentialist grounding, we suggest that scientists who blindly adopt their institutional ethics codes will commit themselves to accepting that software piracy could be morally justified, in some cases. We hope that this conclusion will spark debate over important tensions between ethics codes, copyright law, and the underlying moral basis for these regulations. We conclude by offering practical solutions for researchers. (shrink)

I worked for many years constructing my version of the global case but, as I continued to try to strengthen it, I slowly began to lose confidence. My unease began with several personal experiences. One of our children had a common but annoying physical ailment, for which our pediatrician prescribed a very expensive nasal spray. When I inquired about its cost, the pharmacist informed me that it was a new, genetically engineered, product. The spray worked, and Karen and I never (...) batted an eye. (shrink)

Research on the entry of women into occupational settings confirms the importance of the structural composition of the workplace insofar as women are treated as tokens. This study examines women lawyers in terms of three consequences of tokenism: visibility, polarization, and stereotyping. The results from a survey of lawyers in southern Arizona indicate support for the theory of tokenism. Women are more likely than men to report hearing sexist jokes and remarks, to be referred to by their first names, to (...) be asked whether they are lawyers, and to receive compliments about their appearance rather than their achievements. These results highlight important gender differences in legal careers; it remains to be seen whether changes in women's numerical representation alone will be sufficient for changing the relations between dominants and tokens in legal workplaces. (shrink)

This paper examines Taylor’s moral realism in the light of his criticisms of ‘our subjectivist civilization’. I argue that his work is valuable in its stress on the link between identity and moral judgement and its picture of human beings as ‘strong evaluators’, but I dispute that these considerations lead to moral realism if this is taken to include a claim to truth. Specifically, I argue that Taylor’s ‘Best Account’ principle may generate radical inconsistency and his depiction of practical reason (...) does not lead to any hope of convergence. His own theism serves to illustrate these difficulties. (shrink)