This paper is a preliminary inquiry into the nature of implication; how things are seen as ‘going together’ or following one from another. The argument presented here is that implication is non-logical and is central to the routine process of reason, induction and generalization. The organizing force underlying implication and practical inference is argued to be Von Domarus’ Principle , by which similarity on some dimension of interest ‘carries over’ to some other dimension of interest.One major difficulty with this formulation (...) is that where VDP is the only organizing force, incoherent utterances resembling the word salad of the schizophrenic are likely to result, quite a departure from the routine utterances of normals that a useful model should generate. Two important ways that normal speech and word salad differ are that, in the latter, associations are, first, often implausible or bizarre, and second, they are likely to be so personalistic as to be virtually inaccessible to others.These considerations led to a search for elements that would provide the corrections necessary to bring the products of a VDP based model of implication close to normal utterances in these two areas. One element that appears central, concerns the role of subjective probability in evaluating plausibility of associations. Also considered are aspects of ambiguities in ordinary language especially concerning number and probability. The problem of making associations accessible to others is mitigated by providing elements in the setting or the communication itself that act to highlight or salience the association intended to be communicated. Finally, suggestions for further research are presented. (shrink)

The present work is an anthology of Kumarila Bhatta's works the Slokavarttika and the tantravarttika which deal with such subjects as the nature of the Atman the nature of the Dharma the nature of the Sabda the self Validity of the veda the concept of Sphota the nature of the svarga, generality, Individuality, negation, sunyata, Vijnanavada, Apohavada etc. according to Mimamsa shcool. A reader can derive a fair knowledge of the tenets of the Mimamsakas on different subjects. Besides the author (...) has supplied a short history of the Purvamimamsa in addition to details about Kumarila Bhatta Sabarasvamin Mandana Misra and other important writers of the sastra in the elaborate Introduction. (shrink)

A traditional approach to teaching medical ethics aims to provide knowledge about ethics. This is in line with an epistemological view on ethics in which moral expertise is assumed to be located in theoretical knowledge and not in the moral experience of healthcare professionals. The aim of this paper is to present an alternative, contextual approach to teaching ethics, which is grounded in a pragmatic-hermeneutical and dialogical ethics. This approach is called moral case deliberation. Within moral case deliberation, healthcare professionals (...) bring in their actual moral questions during a structured dialogue. The ethicist facilitates the learning process by using various conversation methods in order to find answers to the case and to develop moral competencies. The case deliberations are not unique events, but are a structural part of the professional training on the work floor within healthcare institutions. This article presents the underlying theory on ethics and illustrates this approach with an example of a moral case deliberation project in a Dutch psychiatric hospital. The project was evaluated using the method of responsive evaluation. This method provided us with rich information about the implementation process and effects the research process itself also lent support to the process of implementation. (shrink)

Professional identity and competent ethical behaviors of nursing students are commonly developed through curricular inclusion of professional nursing values education. Despite the enactment of this approach, nursing students continue to express difficulty in managing ethical conflicts encountered in their practice. This descriptive correlational study explores the relationships between professional nursing values, self-esteem, and ethical decision making among senior baccalaureate nursing students. A convenience sample of 47 senior nursing students from the United States were surveyed for their level of internalized professional (...) nursing values (Revised Professional Nursing Values Scale), level of self-esteem (Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale), and perceived level of confidence in ethical decision making. A significant positive relationship (p < 0.05) was found between nursing students’ professional nursing values and levels of self-esteem. The results of this study can be useful to nursing educators whose efforts are focused on promoting professional identity development and competent ethical behaviors of future nurses. (shrink)

A simple propositional operator is introduced which generalizes pairwise equivalence and occurs widely in mathematics. Attention is focused on a replacement theorem for this notion of generalized equivalence and its use in producing further generalized equivalences.

Exgesis on Mīmāṃsābhāṣya, Śabarasvāmi's commentary on Jaiminī's Mīmāṃsāsūtra, basic aphoristic work of the Mīmāṃsā school in Hindu philosophy; includes supercommentaries.

In Kant’s Groundwork II, the Formula of Universal Law (FUL) seems to be the argumentative link between the notion of a categorical imperative and later formulae (e.g. of humanity), its function as this link dependent on its equivalence to both. Some commentators have denied this equivalence and read the section as a failure. Others have abandoned its expository development by reading later formulae into the FUL. I argue that we need do neither if we distinguish the universality of the FUL (...) from that of the will of all and read Groundwork II as extracting the latter from common moral cognition. (shrink)

Work on Nyaya philosophy; includes Siddhāntamuktāvalī autocommentary and Dinakarī of Dinakarabhaṭṭa, 18th cent.

The ArgumentRecent archival research has brought about a new understanding of the import of Einstein's puzzling remarks (1916) attributing a physical meaning to general covariance. Debates over the scope and meaning of general covariance still persist, even within physics. But already in 1921 Cassirer identified the significance of general covariance as a novel stage in the development of the criterion of objectivity within physics; an account of this development, and its implications, is the primary task undertaken in his monograph of (...) “epistemological considerations” on the theory of relativity. Cassirer's assessment is correct: general covariance, understood as an injunction against dynamical theories with background elements, is a “limiting heuristic principle” guiding Einstein's fundamental conception of a “complete field theory”; as such, it underlies a “separation principle” built into the conceptual framework of the EPR criticism of quantum mechanics. In conclusion, a further parallel is noted: mutual recognition that the principle of general covariance is but a form of “anthropomorphism.”. (shrink)

The American Antitrust Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank, recently completed a study that concludes that competition law and policy plays little if any role in business ethics courses taught in U.S. business schools. To fill this intellectual void, this article makes a case for the development of a business ethics sub-field of antitrust ethics that is synonymous with the ethics of competitive strategy. After reviewing Paine''s Five Principles of Positive Competition and Boatright''s and Hendry''s views on the Moral Manager (...) Model and Moral Market Model, the need for ethical decision-making in a dynamic, innovative environment is explained through a Federal Trade Commission antitrust case involving the Dell Computer Corporation. The author argues that the contributions of Paine, Boatright, and Hendry provide an initial foundation for further research concerning the moral theories, principles, and rules pertaining to antitrust ethics, especially as it pertains to dynamic competition and "fair and competitive" executive behavior. (shrink)

Kant's readers have disagreed about whether, according to his account of cognition, concepts, representations of the understanding, are involved in intuitions, representations of sensibility. But proponents of the affirmative 'conceptualist' answer and those of the negative 'non-conceptualist' answer have alike presupposed that such involvement should be construed in a particular way: i.e., as the involvement of particular concepts in particular exercises of sensibility. I argue, on the contrary, that it should not be: that though, for Kant, no concepts are applied (...) in exercises of sensibility, nonetheless the understanding, the faculty of concepts, is teleologically internal to sensibility and, therefore, to its exercises. That is, those exercises are per se directed towards the provision to the understanding of objects to which its fundamental concepts, the categories, are applicable, though no act of categorical application is internal to them. This conception of sensibility, available only in light of a careful distinction between capacities and acts, is demanded, I argue, by Kant's conception of a priori knowledge as elaborated in his Transcendental Deduction. (shrink)

Contributed articles on self-realization.

In early major works, Cassirer and Schlick differently recast traditional doctrines of the concept and of the relation of concept to intuitive content along the lines of recent epistemological discussions within the exact sciences. In this, they attempted to refashion epistemology by incorporating as its basic principle the notion of functional coordination, the theoretical sciences' own methodological tool for dispensing with the imprecise and unreliable guide of intuitive evidence. Examining their respective reconstructions of the theory of knowledge provides an axis (...) of comparison along which to locate Cassirer's Neo-Kantianism and Schlick's pre-positivist empiricism, and an immediate background of contrast to the subsequent rise of logical empiricism. For in the absence of intuition all our knowledge is without objects and therefore remains entirely empty. (Kant A62/B87) And how awkward is the human mind in diving the nature of things when forsaken by the analogy of what we see and touch directly? (Boltzmann 1895). (shrink)

Treatise on Viśiṣṭādvaita philosophy; Sanskrit text with coomentary and translation.

Central to Kant's ethical theory is the notion of universality, whose apparently canonical expression is his 'Formula of Universal Law' ('FUL'). In the second section of his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals ('Groundwork II'), the FUL stands between the notion of a categorical imperative and later formulations in terms of the notions of humanity as an end in itself, the autonomy of the rational will, and the kingdom of ends. It is meant to be equivalent both to what precedes (...) it and to what follows it. But it has seemed to Kant's readers that neither of these claims to equivalence is true, so that Groundwork II is a comprehensive argumentative failure. I develop a reading of the basic structure of Groundwork II which acquits it of this charge but which, unlike many extant vindicatory readings, does not abandon its expository development by reading later formulations into the FUL. Crucial to my reading is a distinction between three notions of universality which figure in the Groundwork. One of these is expressed by the FUL, but truly central to Kant's ethics is another, that of the will of all, whose philosophical extraction from common moral cognition is the principal task of Groundwork II. (shrink)

Study of the philosophical basis and elements of ayurvedic medicine in Garuḍapurāṇa.

Study of Advaita philosophy with reference to Buddhist doctrines of Śunyavāda and Vijñānavāda.

Ghazzālī, 1058-1111; views on behaviorism ; religious aspects; Islam.

On the classic Hindu philosophies of Nyaya and Vaiśeṣika ; autocommentary on Bhāṣāpariccheda with Sanskrit and Hindi commentaries.

Classical text on non-dualistic (Advaita) Vedanta philosophy.

Supercommentary on Brahmasūtra of Bādarāyaṇa, aphoristic work on Vedanta philosophy and commentary on Vedāntapārijātasaurabha of Nimbārka and Vedāntakaustubha of Śrīnivāsācārya, disciple of Nimbārka; includes Hindi translation; includes Yamunastotra of Keśavakāśmīri Bhaṭṭācārya and study on the doctrines and religious leaders of Nimbarka Sect.

Exegesis, with text, on the Nyāyasūtra of Gautama, basic aphoristic text of Nyāya.

Commentary on Brahmasūtra of Bādarāyana, basic work on the fundamentals of Vedanta philosophy.

The aim of this analysis was to examine the effects on stature in two nationally representative samples of Polish 19-year-old conscripts of maternal and paternal education level, and of degree of urbanization, before and after the economic transition of 1990. Data were from two national surveys of 19-year-old Polish conscripts: 27,236 in 1986 and 28,151 in 2001. In addition to taking height measurements, each subject was asked about the socioeconomic background of their families, including paternal and maternal education, and the (...) name of the locality of residence. The net effect of each of these social factors on stature was determined using four-factor analysis of variance. The secular trend towards increased stature of Polish conscripts has slowed down from a rate 2·1 cm per decade across the period 1965–1986 to 1·5 cm per decade between 1986 and 2001. In both cohorts, mean statures increase with increasing size of locality of residence, paternal education and maternal education. The effect of each of these three social factors on conscript height is highly significant in both cohorts. However, the effect of maternal education has increased substantially while that of size of locality of residence and paternal education diminished between 1986 and 2001. These results imply that the influence of parental education on child growth cannot be due solely to a relationship between education and income, but is also perhaps a reflection of household financial management which benefits child health and growth by better educated parents, regardless of level of income. In addition they suggest that, irrespective of whether there are one or two breadwinners in the family, it is the mother, more so than the father, who is principally responsible for the extent to which such management best favours child health and growth. The asymmetry between the importance of maternal as against paternal education for child growth, clearly seen in the 1986 cohort, became more accentuated in 2001, after the abrupt transition from a command to a free-market economy in the early 1990s. (shrink)