Commentary on the Yogasūtras of Patanjali, ancient Sanskrit work on yoga; includes Sanskrit text in Sinhalese script.

This essay is a reconstruction and defense of Davidson's argument against the intelligibility of the notion of conceptual scheme. After presenting a brief clarification of Davidson's argument in 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme', I turn to reconstructing Davidson's argument. Unlike many commentators, and occasionally Davidson, who hold that the motive force of the argument is the Principle of Charity (or the denial of the Third Dogma), I argue that there is a further principle which underlies the argument. (...) This principle I call the Strong Discrimination Principle. But the argument of the paper is not purely exegetical. Not only do I show how the Strong Discrimination Principle meets certain objections to Davidson's argument, but I show how the Principle clarifies the realist position. In particular, I show how a line of argument advanced by Rorty and Putnam against (metaphysical) realism can be rejected. (shrink)

This book addresses ethical conflicts arising from saving the lives of patients who need a transplant while treating living and dead donors, organ sellers, animals, and embryos with proper moral regard. Our challenge is to develop a better world in the light of debatable values and uncertain consequences.

In this revised edition of Moral Conflicts of Organ Retrieval: A Case for Constructive Pluralism, Charles Hinkley develops and applies the moral philosophy of constructive pluralism to issues and conflicts related to organ transplantation.

In his book Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (2007), Fredric Jameson analyzes the multiple components of utopia and the possibility of achieving utopia in the near future. As this book argues, however, human civilization will never achieve utopia unless humans reach a state of pure consciousness in which they will use their full mental potential and avoid making blunders in life that would undermine the possibility of a utopia. This book develops a non-teleological, (...) comparative poetics between Western and Sanskrit literary traditions by analyzing their opposing theories of language, consciousness and meaning. This comparison seeks to demonstrate the complementary nature of their two perspectives: the objective, conceptual emphasis of contemporary Western theory; and the subjective experiential emphasis of Sanskrit poetics. The potential contribution to the West of Indian culture in general, and Sanskrit poetics in particular, centers on the phenomenon of direct experience. Without the direct experience of pure consciousness, humans will not achieve a state of utopia because they will remain entangled in materialism without access to idealism or spiritualism available only through the direct experience of the unity of pure consciousness or the void of conceptions. (shrink)

Comparative study of Buddhist philosophy and Hindu philosophy; with reference to India and Sri Lanka.

Open peer commentary on the article “Radical Constructivist Structural Design Education for Large Cohorts of Chinese Learners” by Christiane M. Herr. Upshot: Herr’s thought-provoking approach to structural design education targets goals that include fostering the development of students’ intrinsic motivation and shifting the instructor’s role from one of dispensing knowledge to one of guiding students’ conceptual organization of their experiences. This commentary is intended to start a dialogue regarding the affordances and constraints of particular approaches to achieving these goals. In (...) particular, opportunities for self-generated feedback within the context of students’ productive activity and the use of models of individual student thinking to guide instructional planning are presented as promising possibilities. (shrink)

We attempt in this paper to tie together several basic insights of praxeology, and several that are not at all that basic. These include the following: that gains from exchange are subjective; that this applies to profits and interest; that credit transactions can occur under barter; that interest arises from time preference even under a pure time preference theory of interest; and that productivity can, under disequilibrium conditions, affect the various rates of interest.

Neurotechnologies that promise to dampen (via pharmacologicals), disassociate (via electro-convulsive therapy), erase (via deep brain stimulation), and replace (via false memory creation) unsavory episodic memories are no longer the subject of science fiction. They have already arrived, and their funding suggests that they will not disappear anytime soon. In light of their emergence, this essay examines the neurostructure of normative morality to clarify that memory manipulation, which promises to take away that which is bad in human experience, also removes that (...) which enables human beings to be good. Concepts such as free will, moral responsibility, and the neurobiological basis of moral reasoning are explored to underscore the fundamental hubris inherent to the memory manipulation enterprise. (shrink)

Research has established that exposure to a combination of diagnostic (i.e., relevant) and nondiagnostic (i.e., irrelevant) information results in predictions that are more regressive than predictions based on diagnostic information (Hackenbrack, 1992; Hoffman and Patton, 1997). This phenomenon has been labeled the dilution effect (e.g., Tetlock and Boettger, 1989) and has been documented when individuals make predictions. This study tests for the dilution effect when small groups make predictions, and examines the effect of using a procedure designed to reduce the (...) dilution effect. Results indicate that group predictions are influenced by nondiagnostic information in the same manner as are individual predictions, and allowing participants to rate the diagnosticity of information prior to making predictions does not reduce the dilution effect. (shrink)

This book tells the story of how the Platonic vision of Michael Polanyi – the Hungarian-British chemist and philosopher – bridges the gap between speculative metaphysics and scientific practice, thus making sense of the broad swathe of human experience in a phenomenologically satisfying fashion. The central proposal is that Polanyi is a Platonist due to his affirmation of the ontological status of abstract objects, with particular focus placed on the question of uninstantiated universals. The book engages contemporary, speculative realists from (...) both continental and analytic traditions as it introduces Polanyi’s influential epistemology and unpacks the fascinating metaphysics implied thereby. It then proceeds to develop Polanyi’s rather unsystematic metaphysics into a coherent, post-critical Platonism which incorporates his well-known theory of tacit knowledge, thus achieving something akin to the ancient Neoplatonic synthesis of Plato and Aristotle in our contemporary, scientific context. (shrink)

La mort assistée par un prestataire est en passe de devenir l’une des principales causes de décès au Canada depuis l’adoption de la loi sur l’aide médicale à mourir (AMM) en 2016. Ce qui devait être exceptionnel est devenu courant; certains demandent qu’on s’y attende. De plus en plus de patients atteints de maladies chroniques non terminales sont euthanasiés. Le personnel de santé approuve et propose désormais des MAiD aux patients vulnérables qui sont dépressifs, handicapés, atteints d’une maladie chronique ou (...) appauvris. Cet article présente une justification du point de vue de la loi morale transcendante, traditionnellement appelée loi naturelle, pour expliquer pourquoi le Canada a maintenant le régime d’euthanasie le plus libéral au monde. L’acte d’euthanasie exige que le prestataire mette délibérément fin à la vie du patient en lui administrant une substance mortelle. Cette pratique est contraire à la loi morale transcendante : ne pas tuer. Dès lors qu’une culture rejette délibérément cette loi fondamentale et adopte une éthique utilitaire dépourvue de tout principe, à l’exception de la notion d’autonomie, il est inévitable que cette pratique entraîne une ambiguïté et une incertitude éthique. Au fur et à mesure que la pratique persiste et devient la norme, l’aveuglement moral se développe et conduit à des abus flagrants sur les êtres humains. Je présente un diagramme éthique, la courbe de dissociation morale, qui illustre la raison des tendances observées au Canada. Le système de santé canadien doit réaffirmer les principes de l’éthique hippocratique et la dignité inhérente de ses patients. Les professionnels de la santé doivent donner la priorité aux soins palliatifs de haute qualité, empreints de compassion, et dire « non » à l’idée de mettre délibérément fin à la vie de patients souffrants. Ce faisant, la clarté morale sera retrouvée et les plus vulnérables de la société seront protégés. (shrink)

In the era of globalization, a deep understanding of the ḥalālan ṭayyiban food concept is becoming increasingly important. How we, especially the nation’s young generation, must understand, internalize, and apply these principles in our daily lives is an increasingly urgent challenge. Learning the concepts of ḥalāl food and thayyib is no longer just a matter of factual knowledge, but is also a deep ethical and religious responsibility. This article aims to prove and evaluate a relevant and innovative learning approach to (...) be applied in schools in re-conceptualizing the subject of ḥalālan ṭayyiban food in science subjects. The method used in the research was the pre-experiment method with a sample of 37 students in grades 4, 5, and 6 at The Mother Foundation Elementary School, who were selected randomly. Data collection was carried out using a quantitative and qualitative approach (mixed method) which was then analyzed descriptively using an epistemological philosophy of science perspective. Data obtained was taken using interview instruments and concept understanding tests. The results of this research show that the constructivist epistemological approach can increase students' conceptual understanding of the subject of ḥalālan ṭayyiban food with the gain calculation being in the high category. This proves that the constructivist epistemological approach can provide meaningful learning that directs students to explore their thinking in more depth. (shrink)

We argue that in contemporary business organizations, in which fundamental purpose is construed to be increased value—especially in ‘participative’ organizations, in which non–hierarchal interaction (for example, work teams) is the norm; and in ‘adaptive’ organizations, in which unpredictable change is the rule—a process of values covenanting will be much more valueable than just espoused values or even values covenants. We propose such a process model for organizational values covenanting and argue that such covenanting reflects an anthropomorphism of the human character (...) development process, validated in terms of the theory of viable systems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Croire et savoir: Les principes de la connaissance selon Nicolas d’AutrécourtDallas G. Denery IIChristophe Grellard. Croire et savoir: Les principes de la connaissance selon Nicolas d’Autrécourt. Paris: J. Vrin, 2005. Pp. 313. Paper, €38,00.Nicholas of Autrecourt has often seemed to be one of those philosophers doomed to be best known for everything but their own ideas. Famously, if inaccurately, dubbed "the Medieval Hume" by one of his first (...) modern critics, the threat or fear of skepticism has in one way or another shaped most subsequent studies of Nicholas's work. While understandable, this really is unfortunate. Nicholas himself clearly states that his philosophical goal was to avoid the skeptical consequences that he believed were latent in the writings of his scholastic peers. In this excellent new work, the first monograph-length study devoted to Nicholas's thought in nearly 60 years, Christophe Grellard goes a long way towards recovering Nicholas's very real contributions to fourteenth-century intellectual life.Any attempt to interpret Nicholas's thought runs up against one significant problem—few of his works survive. All that remains are a fascinating and lengthy (not to mention, confusing and unfinished) work of natural philosophy, Exigit ordo, and several letters touching on issues in epistemology, cognition, and logic. As a result, even situating Nicholas's thought within the proper intellectual currents of the first decades of the fourteenth century has proven difficult. Whose work influenced him? Who were the objects of his criticism? What were his motives? Until recently, most scholars have attempted to trace the influence of William Ockham on Nicholas's thought. Drawing from recent work on the University of Paris during the fourteenth century, Grellard not only downplays Ockham's influence on Nicholas, but also Nicholas's membership in the faculty of theology. Rather, he stresses Nicholas's ongoing involvement in the arts faculty, where he continued to teach even as he studied for his degree in theology. This has two significant consequences. First, it allows Grellard to treat all of Nicholas's writings as contributions to the practice of natural philosophy. Indeed, in his compelling first chapter, Grellard contends that the initial sections of the Exigit, in which Nicholas famously condemns scholastic Aristotelianism as nothing more than an institutionalized pedagogy of error and untruth, must be read as a plea for a distinction between philosophy and theology, between speculation and faith. Even if Nicholas was not alone at the time in pushing for these distinctions (Ockham and John Buridan had argued along similar lines), Grellard demonstrates that Nicholas's approach was certainly the more radical and extreme. Second, the shift in focus from theology to arts brings with it a shift in Nicholas's most important interlocutors. To begin, Aristotle and Averroes become constant background forces in Nicholas's thought. Moreover, as the final section of Grellard's work makes clear, many of Nicholas's ideas are most usefully understood in light of writings of two other arts masters, John Buridan and Nicole Oresme, rather than in the context of debates among his contemporaries in the theology faculty. [End Page 119]These initial interpretive decisions shape the overall structure of Grellard's book, which moves, in three parts, from a deft analysis of Nicholas's theory of evidence and probability to his account of the objects of cognition and, finally, to a comparison of Nicholas's and Buridan's epistemological theories. Unlike so many prior studies that begin with Nicholas's famous critique of a fellow theologian's cognitive theories, thereby framing Nicholas's project in terms of theological debates concerning the intuitive cognition of non-existents and God's ability to cause false visions, Grellard begins with Nicholas's positive theory of knowledge. This effectively sidesteps the entire question of Nicholas's skepticism, a question Nicholas himself explicitly tried to avoid. Nicholas comes across as a philosopher keenly aware of the limits of human cognition, yet eager to develop a viable and wholly rational epistemology within those limits. Those limits, Grellard makes clear, have everything to do with appearances, with what we can rationally and legitimately infer about the world based upon what we see... (shrink)

The diverse number of N-space theories and the unrestrained growth of the number of spaces within the multiple space models has incurred general skepticism about the new search space variants within the search space paradigm of psychology. I argue that any N-space theory is computationally equivalent to a single space model. Nevertheless, the N-space theories may explain the systematic behavior of human problem solving better than the original one search space theory by identifying relationships between the tasks that occur in (...) problem solving. These tasks are independent of the particular process and may not be explicitly represented by the problem solver. N-space theorists seem to overlook their own reason for distinguishing N-space theories from single space models, namely the presupposition that these tasks must have a unified, underlying search space architecture. This assumption is ill-founded and may implement a procedural restraint that could impede psychological research. (shrink)