Contributed seminar papers on Jainism and solutions of contemporary problems, organized by Saurashtra Kesari Pranaguru Jain Philosophic and Lilerary Research Centre, Mumbai in 2019.

There is a popular hypothesis that performance on implicit and explicit memory tasks reflects 2 distinct memory systems. Explicit memory is said to store those experiences that can be consciously recollected, and implicit memory is said to store experiences and affect subsequent behavior but to be unavailable to conscious awareness. Although this division based on awareness is a useful taxonomy for memory tasks, the authors review the evidence that the unconscious character of implicit memory does not necessitate that it be (...) treated as a separate system of human memory. They also argue that some implicit and explicit memory tasks share the same memory representations and that the important distinction is whether the task (implicit or explicit) requires the formation of a new association. The authors review and critique dissociations from the behavioral, amnesia, and neuroimaging literatures that have been advanced in support of separate explicit and implicit memory systems by highlighting contradictory evidence and by illustrating how the data can be accounted for using a simple computational memory model that assumes the same memory representation for those disparate tasks. (shrink)

This edition of Giraldus Odonis' Logica for the first time gives access to an important and original treatise, which has unduly been neglected since the author's death. It is also important in that it gives evidence of interesting achievements in the field of logic outside the anti-metaphysical circle surrounding Ockham.

The appearance of Jesus Christ in his time was inevitable. Plato's ideas were to find a material embodiment on earth. The image of Christ as a balance, the harmony of light-spirit and darkness-matter, is the materialization of the ideal image.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2008.

Mishel Fuco not only influenced the consciousness of modern West, but changed the modus of thinking, the way of perception of many traditional notions, transformed the opinions about the reality, history, person. Philosopher’s principle research programme which attaches the entirety to his works is “archeology of knowledge” programme, the search of human knowledge’s original layers. Let us mark that all Fuco’s works in 1960s are devoted to main aim: to clear up the conditions of historical origin of different mental aims (...) and social institutions in the culture of the Modern Time. Though in the whole this common aim remained for Fuco invariable, but the level on which he realizes his research search is changing constantly and rather logically. Relations of power, and to be more exact,accumulations of power and knowledge, social and cognitive which define all the aggregate of specific possibilities of culture in each given historical period. More than that the philosopher offers the particular prospects of sight of modern society and precisely totality of power relations, its ubiquitous nature and specific productivity which produces itself in each moment in any point or rather in any attitude from one point to another. From Fuco’s point of view the power is everywhere and not because it involves everything but because it comes from everywhere. The power is productive in that degree in which it is not associated with one definite imperious instance but pierces all kinds of activity in society, putting on its indelible stamp, developing under definite angle and due to this factit causes products, produced by them. The power induces and at the same time determines the fact which appears as a result of its inducement. The thirst of supremacy, which surrounds the individual and is focused on it as on the center of its use of force, comes out as a defining sign. It should be noticed that Fuco’s conception of power is not reduced to the understanding it as anonymous impersonal net of relations, piercing all society. It is supplemented by power treatment,coming out in “designed” look of definite imperious structure or imperious institute. (shrink)

The best-interests standard is a widely used ethical, legal, and social basis for policy and decision-making involving children and other incompetent persons. It is under attack, however, as self-defeating, individualistic, unknowable, vague, dangerous, and open to abuse. The author defends this standard by identifying its employment, first, as a threshold for intervention and judgment (as in child abuse and neglect rulings), second, as an ideal to establish policies or prima facie duties, and, third, as a standard of reasonableness. Criticisms of (...) the best-interests standard are reconsidered after clarifying these different meanings. (shrink)

This paper emphasizes the crucial role of variation, at several different levels, for a detailed historical understanding of the development of the biomedical sciences. Going beyond valuable recent studies that focus on model organisms, experimental systems and instruments, we argue that all of these categories can be accommodated within our approach, which pays special attention to organismal and cultural variation. Our empirical examples are drawn in particular from recent historical studies of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century genetics and physiology. Based on (...) the quasi-paradoxical conclusion that biological and cultural variation both constrains and enables innovation in the biomedical sciences, we argue that more attention should be paid to variation as an analytical category in the historiography of the life sciences. (shrink)

For Brun, the separation of men from existence, which expresses itself in various forms of anxiety, is the central concern of philosophy. While the separation of men from one another can be partly overcome by language and by modern technology's "conquests," the ontological separation cannot, the philosophic attitude of wonder can never be entirely replaced by nihil mirari. He takes issue with the philosophies of praxis which regard human action as the potential remedy for all separation. The thesis is defended (...) capably and passionately.--W. L. M. (shrink)

May discovered Diderot's copiously annotated copy of this anti-materialist tract by Hemsterhuis, known to many contemporaries as "the Dutch Plato"; this edition contains May's interesting introduction, a facsimile of the original text, and a transcription of all of Diderot's comments. The comments bear on infelicities of style as well as of thought, though the latter preponderate: the Lettre is not, alas, the product of a first-rate philosophical intellect. Diderot's strong objections to Hemsterhuis' crude theory of a moral organ can be (...) taken as complementing his Refutation of Helvetius, which dates from the same period.—W. L. M. (shrink)

The first critical edition of the _Syncategoreumata_ by the thirteenth-century philosopher Peter of Spain, accompanied by a facing-page English translation to make its contents accessible to modern readers. The introduction gives an account of all the manuscripts used for the edition. Extensive indexes have been added to facilitate the reader's orientation in the book.