Collected works predominantly on Buddhist doctrines and philosophy.

Critical study predominantly on Budhist philosophy; includes some artciles on Tibetan literary criticism.

Selected works predominantly on critical study of different doctrinal and philosophical principles of Buddhism; includes history of Buddhism in India and its development in Tibet.

Collection of writings on Buddhist logic.

Study on Trilaksaṇa, the four seals of the Buddhist doctrine.

Literal explanation of the ʼJam-dbyaṅs-bźad-pa Ṅag-dbaṅ-brtson-ʼgrus's text Grub mthaʼi rnam par bźag pa ʼkhrul spoṅ gdoṅ lṅaʼi sgra dbyaṅs kun mkhyen lam bzaṅ gsal baʼi rin chen sgron me, deals on comparative study of the philosophical systems (siddhānta) of Buddhism and Hinduism.

Collected writings chiefly on Buddhist philosophy; includes Buddhist doctrines.

These days there are many different understandings and definitions of the term aesthetics. Sometimes it is regarded as identical to the pleasing or the sensual, other times it has a more workaday meaning, being associated with e.g. a well-stocked lunch table. The common denominator, however, is that aesthetics is understood as something that can be recorded in the real world, having been assigned an independent existence. The concept has thus undergone ‘ontological dumping’, by which we understand that an analytical concept (...) has become a “thing in the world”, i.e. an epistemological state has been transformed into an ontological state. The problem with this is that what can potentially be used to understand has instead turned into something to be understood. In the endeavour not to downgrade the epistemological dimension in favour of the experiential dimension, we attempt in this article to re-establish aesthetics as an analytical concept: Something to be seen with – instead of something that is seen. In addition, we put it into perspective alongside culture and art, which we feel has undergone the same ontological dumping. The article concludes with some reflections on the implications this may have for educational practice. As its theoretical springboard, the article takes the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, drawing its exemplary material from the Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård. (shrink)

作者是西藏共產黨的創始人，也是世界第一人以辯證法證出月球存有液態水。這是一本以辯證法原理闡述的論文彙編，書中詳細分析質量的運動周期，為了解辯證結構規律及運動規律之專著。.

本书基本内容可分主体的社会辩证法与次体的自然辩证法两大部分。对于辩证法构成根基的逻辑公式及推动根基的周期定律,对社会及自然各主要学科的辩证分析作了扼要的论述。.

Comparative analytical study on two truths according to interpretation of eminent masters Gautama Buddha and Mi-bo Gśen-rab of Bon-po sect; includes their brief biographies.

本书作者耗费数十年心血,研究和总结出来辩证法结构与运动规律的逻辑公式、周期定律及其示意图解,对社会科学和自然科学各主要学科作了辩证的分析,探索了它们的本质联系和运动规律。.

Collected works of author predominantly on Sakyapa liturgical, rituals, and sadhanas texts.

On Tibetan basic Buddhist logic and dialectics.

Analytical view on Buddhist logic in dialectical debate.

Collection of five major Mahāyāna Buddhist studies: 1. Pramāṇa (Tshad ma), 2. Mādhyamika (Dbu ma), 3. Prajñāpāramitā (Phar phyin) 4. Abhidharmakośa (Mngon pa mdzod), and 5. Vinaya ('Dul ba).

Selected explanation on the difficult points of the Buddhist philosophical view and realization in the translated words of the Buddha and their commentaries and treatises by Indian panditas. Includes detailed analysis on the meaning of the word "dharma", predominantly on the Vaibasika and Madhyamaka school of thought with special references to the Bkaʾ-ʾgyur and Bstan-ʾgyur and interpretation of difficult points.

On the developments of logic and epistemology in India, and the history of logic and epistemology in India and Tibet.

本书以通俗的事例和语言系统阐述了哲学原理,并用哲学思维方法分析了大量社会经济现象,阐明了许多经济生活中的哲理。.

Handbook for Buddhist ethical aspects for Bhutanese youngsters.

The definition of art is controversial in contemporary philosophy. Whether art can be defined has also been a matter of controversy. The philosophical usefulness of a definition of art has also been debated. -/- Contemporary definitions can be classified with respect to the dimensions of art they emphasize. One distinctively modern, conventionalist, sort of definition focuses on art’s institutional features, emphasizing the way art changes over time, modern works that appear to break radically with all traditional art, the relational properties (...) of artworks that depend on works’ relations to art history, art genres, etc. – more broadly, on the undeniable heterogeneity of the class of artworks. The more traditional, less conventionalist sort of definition defended in contemporary philosophy makes use of a broader, more traditional concept of aesthetic properties that includes more than art-relational ones, and puts more emphasis on art’s pan-cultural and trans-historical characteristics – in sum, on commonalities across the class of artworks. Hybrid definitions aim to do justice to both the traditional aesthetic dimension as well as to the institutional and art-historical dimensions of art, while privileging neither. (shrink)

Ubiquitous healthcare is an emerging area of technology that uses a large number of environmental and patient sensors and actuators to monitor and improve patients' physical and mental condition. Tiny sensors gather data on almost any physiological characteristic that can be used to diagnose health problems. This technology faces some challenging ethical questions, ranging from the small-scale individual issues of trust and efficacy to the societal issues of health and longevity gaps related to economic status. It presents particular problems in (...) combining developing computer/information/media ethics with established medical ethics. This article describes a practice-based ethics approach, considering in particular the areas of privacy, agency, equity and liability. It raises questions that ubiquitous healthcare will force practitioners to face as they develop ubiquitous healthcare systems. Medicine is a controlled profession whose practise is commonly restricted by government-appointed authorities, whereas computer software and hardware development is notoriously lacking in such regimes. (shrink)

There has long been a politics around the way in which women are represented, with objection not so much to specific images as to a regime of looking which places the represented woman in a particular relationship to the spectator's gaze. Artists have sometimes avoided the representation of women altogether, but they are now producing images which challenge the regime. How do these images succeed in their challenge? The Emptiness of the Image offers a psychoanalytic answer. Parveen Adams argues that, (...) despite flaws in some of the details of its arguments, psychoanalytic theory retains an overwhelming explanatory strength in relation to questions of sexual difference and representation. She goes on to show how the issue of desire changes the way we can think of images and their effects. Throughout she discusses the work of theorists, artists and filmmakers such as Helene Deutsch, Catherine MacKinnon, Mary Kelly, Francis Bacon, Michael Powell and Della Grace. The Emptiness of the Image shows how the very space of representation can change to provide a new way of thinking the relation between the text and the spectator. It shows how psychoanalytic theory is supple enough to slide into and transform the most unexpected situations. (shrink)

Deeply rooted structures of racism, ableism, misogyny, ageism, and transphobia hurt great numbers of people, exposing them to intolerance, economic exclusion, and physical harm around the globe. Billions of land animals suffer and die annually in concentrated feeding operations and slaughterhouses. Our planet and all who live here are in perilous straights as the climate changes. In the face of such grievous problems, people who want to find positive ways to respond often grapple with difficult questions about how to make (...) a difference. Effective Altruism has arisen as an attempt to help answer these questions, encouraging people to give as much money as they can in the most effective ways to address human and animal suffering. But the Effective Altruists’ answers support some of the very social structures that cause suffering, undermining its efforts to “do the most good.” The Good It Promises, The Harm It Does is the first book-length critique of Effective Altruism. It brings together a diverse group of activists and scholars to explore Effective Altruism’s failure to meaningfully address forms of human and animal suffering. (shrink)

The paper is an interpretation and defense of Kant’s conception of things in themselves as noumena, along the following lines. Noumena are transempirical realities. As such they have several important roles in Kant’s critical philosophy (Section 1). Our theoretical faculties cannot obtain enough content for a conception of noumena that would assure their real possibility as objects, but can establish their merely formal logical possibility (Sections 2-3). Our practical reason, however, grounds belief in the real possibility of some noumena, and (...) even knowledge of the noumenal reality of a free will (Section 4). Section 5 defends Kant’s conception of noumena as a good piece of philosophy, particularly with respect to its distinction between logical and real possibility. Are noumena numerically identical with experienced (phenomenal) objects? Kantian principles yield the answers that human selves are, God isn’t, and it’s harder to say about bodies (Section 6). (shrink)

A discussion with Roberto Andorno about global bioethics and biolaw, the Coronavirus pandemic, and its impact on human dignity and rights. Can we foresee the emerging new profile of global bioethics and biolaw in the post-Coronavirus era? How significant are they going to be in the future, after the enormous pressure that the Coronavirus pandemic has exercised on key political, legal, and ethical values? Must the voice of bioethicists -compared to the ‘hard’ scientific data- be louder in the future concerning (...) decisions about emergency social and medical measures? Is there a hope that public empowerment will support robust, global public engagement and meaningful deliberation? How much does Roberto Andorno’s view on human dignity reveal a supposed commitment to moral realism? The massive deaths of elderly people living in hospices of Sweden, Spain, and Italy, based on an implicit ‘fair innings’ view, has recently posed certain questions on the moral unacceptability of such practices. The same questions arise in the case of the legalization of euthanasia grounded on the implicit acceptance of the view that life is not worth living under certain circumstances. Is it possible that the human rights bodies worldwide will acquire executive power, and how could this become possible? How influential the ‘precautionary principle’ can become regarding clinical and research ethics in the future? How urgent is the importance of the introduction of bioethical education in the curricula of ‘hard’ empirical studies? Roberto Andorno discusses with us all these controversial and under heated public debate issues, giving sometimes provocative answers. (shrink)

Part of Allen et al.’s criticism of Hamilton’s rule makes sense only if we are interested in social adaptation rather than merely social selection. Under the assumption that we are interested in casually modeling social adaptation, I illustrate how graphical causal models of social adaptation can be useful for predicting evolution by adaptation. I then argue for two consequences of this approach given some of the recent philosophical literature. I argue Birch’s claim that the proper way to understand Hamilton’s rule (...) is as providing an organizational framework for causal models is incorrect. I provide an account of a causally adequate decomposition of evolutionary change due to social adaptation and show that my account is superior to Okasha’s. (shrink)

When God gave humankind dominion over the earth he may not have known exactly what we would be able to do with it. The technical capacities to which the production and reproduction of our everyday life have given rise have grown at an astonishing and, it seems, ever-increasing rate. The instruments that we use to do work on the world have become sharper and more refined, and the implications of human interventions in the nonhuman environment are much more far-reaching than (...) could have been imagined even forty years ago. It has become something of a cliche to say that our technical abilities have outstripped the wisdom to know when, where, and how we should appropriately use them, but techniques such as genetic engineering invite the dusting-off of the cliche and the asking of the question implicit in it: We know we can splice genes, but should we splice them? We might of course come to the conclusion that we should only splice some of them some of the time, but even arriving at that conclusion presupposes that the ethical question has been asked and answered. (shrink)

Grigorieff showed that forcing to add a subset of ω using partial functions with suitably chosen domains can add a generic real of minimal degree. We show that forcing with partial functions to add a subset of an uncountable κ without adding a real never adds a generic of minimal degree. This is in contrast to forcing using branching conditions, as shown by Brown and Groszek.

This essay argues that gratitude for one's own life is an intelligible attitude to have. It does so by arguing that reducing pro-attitudes in response to unintentional benefits to “appreciation” is too broad. Instead, such “appreciation” can be understood as gratitude if such benefits satisfy a number of conditions that track or are analogous to why we care about interpersonally bestowed benefits. One's own life satisfies those four conditions, which can make gratitude for it intelligible—when it is perceived as a (...) benefit. (shrink)

The core argument in favor of the view that immorality is a natural defect for human beings, which has been developed by Foot, assumes that if justice and compassion have important functions in human survival and reproduction, then injustice and cruelty are natural defects in human beings. But this ignores possibilities and results that cannot reasonably be ignored. Multiple and mixed naturally sound types can and do occur in nature. Moreover, research in the life sciences suggests that at least some (...) bad human behaviors, traits, or strategies are selected for and continue to have important survival-and-reproduction-related functions in human life. All this fits poorly with the position that immorality is a natural defect for human beings. Emerging as much more plausible is the competing view that, for human beings, natural soundness sometimes supports behaviors, traits, or strategies that conflict with (any ideal that can plausibly be called) moral goodness. (shrink)

Gender, ‘race’, poverty, health and discourses of health reform in the context of globalization: a postcolonial feminist perspective in policy researchIn this paper, I draw on extant literature and my empirical work to discuss the impact of globalization and healthcare reform on the lives of women — those from countries of the South as well as of the North. First, I review briefly the economic hardships identified in different sectors of the population that have been attributed to how globalization is (...) now working. Second, I examine what these global processes mean for health, with particular focus on poverty, gender, racialization and health. Third, I reflect on how nurse scientists might develop research agendas in the 21st century that would foster social transformation and social justice for all people. The position taken here is not an indictment of globalization. Rather, I argue that globalization is a fact in all of our lives. There are positive aspects of globalization. There are also negative aspects which we must collectively address, given that the issues identified can have deleterious consequences for the world’s poor, women in particular. I suggest that, to construct knowledge for practice and praxis, research agendas of the future should be inclusive of subaltern voices. I argue that drawing on a postcolonial feminist epistemology might help us to define such agendas, and express the multilayered sociopolitical contexts of health and illness in advocacy with policy‐makers. (shrink)

We define life as the amplification of quantum uncertainty up to macroscopic scales. A living being is any amplifier that achieves this goal. We argue that everything we know about life can be explained from this idea. We study a ladder mechanism to estimate the probability that the amplification occurs spontaneously in nature. The amplification mechanism is so sensitive to small variations of its own parameters that it acts as a bifurcation itself, i.e. it implies that the universe is either (...) everywhere dead or alive wherever possible. Since the first option is excluded by the existence of life on earth, we infer that the universe hosts a huge number of inhabited planets (possibly one per star on average). We also investigate models of conscious and unconscious learning processes, as well as the structure of the brain and evolution. Finally, we address the problem of creating artificial life. (shrink)

A comparison between Lacan's ideas on the one hand, and Buber's and Paz's on the other reveals an absolute incompatibility of positions. According to Lacan, an original unity cannot be recuperated and has never actually existed. Birth imposes a condition of incompleteness upon human beings, bringing about desire and a nostalgic search for a lost object. All human actions are reduced to a search for objects that produce a false satisfaction and joy and replace a basic emptiness with their presence. (...) Conversely, for Buber/Paz, an original unity is established since the beginning and has never ceased to exist. Human actions can awake this unity at each and every moment and in each, and every fact and act of daily life.Um confronto entre as idéias de Lacan de um lado e as de Buber e O. Paz de outro revela uma incompatibilidade absoluta de posições. Para Lacan, a unidade primordial é irresgatável e, aliás, jamais existiu, não passando de uma alucinação. O nascimento impõe ao sujeito uma condição de fragmentaridade. Toda a empresa humana se reduz à busca da unidade perdida, ao desejo, que visa a objetos que, produzirem um simulacro de gozo, preenchem uma ausência primeira com sua presença de maneira falseada. Inversamente, para Buber/Paz, o todo primordial se instala desde o princípio e jamais deixa de existir. A ação humana pode despertar este todo a cada momento, em cada ato e fato corriqueiro. (shrink)

The arguments that Fodor (1987: 150-52) gives in support of a Language of Thought are apparently straightforward. (1) Linguistic capacities are "systematic", in the sense that if one understands the words 'John loves Mary' one also understands the form of words 'Mary loves John'. In other words, sentences have a combinatorial semantics, because they have constituent structure. (2) If cognitive capacities are systematic in the same way, they must have constituent structure also. Thus there is a Language of Thought. The (...) essential connection between language and thought that the argument requires is: Since the function of language is to express thought, to understand a sentence is to grasp the thought that its utterance standardly conveys. So from the systematicity of sentences it follows that anyone who can grasp the thought that John loves Mary can grasp the thought that Mary loves John. Thought must be as systematic as language, for the best empirical explanation of the psychological fact that one who grasps the thought that John loves Mary can grasp the thought that Mary loves John is that grasping a thought is standing in some thinking relation to a complex entity whose constituents are MARY, X LOVES Y, and JOHN and semantic relations among MARY, X LOVES Y, and JOHN. So sayeth Fodor (1987). (shrink)

We propose a distinction between precategorial, acategorial and categorial states within a scientifically oriented understanding of mental processes. This distinction can be specified by approaches developed in cognitive neuroscience and the analytical philosophy of mind. On the basis of a representational theory of mental processes, acategoriality refers to a form of knowledge that presumes fully developed categorial mental representations, yet refers to nonconceptual experiences in mental states beyond categorial states. It relies on a simultaneous experience of potential individual representations and (...) their actual “representational ground”, an undifferentiated precategorial state. This simultaneity is possible if the mental state does not reside in a representation but in between representations. Acategoriality can be formally modeled as an unstable state of a dynamical mental system that is subject to particular stability criteria. (shrink)

The fundamental problem on which Ilya Prigogine and the Brussels- Austin Group have focused can be stated briefly as follows. Our observations indicate that there is an arrow of time in our experience of the world (e.g., decay of unstable radioactive atoms like Uranium, or the mixing of cream in coffee). Most of the fundamental equations of physics are time reversible, however, presenting an apparent conflict between our theoretical descriptions and experimental observations. Many have thought that the observed arrow of (...) time was either an artifact of our observations or due to very special initial conditions. An alternative approach, followed by the Brussels-Austin Group, is to consider the observed direction of time to be a basic physical phenomenon due to the dynamics of physical systems. This essay focuses mainly on recent developments in the Brussels-Austin Group after the mid 1980s. The fundamental concerns are the same as in their earlier approaches (subdynamics, similarity transformations), but the contemporary approach utilizes rigged Hilbert space (whereas the older approaches used Hilbert space). While the emphasis on nonequilibrium statistical mechanics remains the same, their more recent approach addresses the physical features of large Poincar´. (shrink)

A major driving force behind the attention that cognitive neuroscience has received in recent decades is the deep mystery of how consciousness is related to brain activity. Many scientists have been fascinated by the wealth of empirical data for individual neurons, neural assemblies, brain areas, and related psychological and behavioral features, and by progressively powerful computational tools to simulate corresponding cortical networks. At the same time, the interested public has been attracted by fancy illustrations of brain activity (e.g., from imaging (...) techniques) and by pretentious claims of neural solutions to basic philosophical problems (e.g., free will versus determinism) in popular magazines and newspapers. However, heaps of data, extensive simulations, pretty pictures and bold statements cannot replace the insight that is inevitable to relate the available facts to one another in an intelligible manner. I am talking about the old-fashioned stance that understanding is the ultimate goal of scientific effort. In this respect, the need for new conceptual and theoretical ideas in cognitive neuroscience begins to be recognized by prominent representatives of the field. Theory in this sense must not be confused with models fitting data, e.g. by regression algorithms, cluster analyses, etc. It is uncontroversial that experimental and numerical work is and will remain mandatory for scientific progress. But it can only unfold its full value if it is embedded within a profound theoretical framework. To formulate a serious, clear-cut and transparent formal framework for cognitive neuroscience is a challenge comparable to the early stage of physics four centuries ago. Only very few approaches worth mentioning are visible in contemporary literature. I think that Wallace’s book presents an appreciable step in the right direction. However, it is not the ultimate breakthrough yet. Much is left for future work before a full-fledged theory of consciousness will be established. In two central conceptual respects, Wallace builds on earlier work: Dretske’s (1981) usage of informational terms in consciousness research and Baars’ (1988) global neuronal workspace model.. (shrink)

We present results from numerical studies of supervised learning operations in recurrent networks considered as graphs, leading from a given set of input conditions to predetermined outputs. Graphs that have optimized their output for particular inputs with respect to predetermined outputs are asymptotically stable and can be characterized by attractors which form a representation space for an associative multiplicative structure of input operations. As the mapping from a series of inputs onto a series of such attractors generally depends on the (...) sequence of inputs, this structure is generally noncommutative. Moreover, the size of the set of attractors, indicating the complexity of learning, is found to behave non-monotonically as learning proceeds. A tentative relation between this complexity and the notion of pragmatic information is indicated. (shrink)

The emergence of mental states from neural states by partitioning the neural phase space is analyzed in terms of symbolic dynamics. Well-defined mental states provide contexts inducing a criterion of structural stability for the neurodynamics that can be implemented by particular partitions. This leads to distinguished subshifts of finite type that are either cyclic or irreducible. Cyclic shifts correspond to asymptotically stable fixed points or limit tori whereas irreducible shifts are obtained from generating partitions of mixing hyperbolic systems. These stability (...) criteria are applied to the discussion of neural correlates of consiousness, to the definition of macroscopic neural states, and to aspects of the symbol grounding problem. In particular, it is shown that compatible mental descriptions, topologically equivalent to the neurodynamical description, emerge if the partition of the neural phase space is generating. If this is not the case, mental descriptions are incompatible or complementary. Consequences of this result for an integration or unification of cognitive science or psychology, respectively, will be indicated. (shrink)

The concept of archetypes has received a number of fundamentally different interpretations, and there are numerous additional philosophical concepts which can be characterized as modifications of those interpretations. Chris Nunn’s paper represents an approach to bringing a specific one among those concepts -- Richard Dawkins’ neo-Darwinistic conception of memes -- into contact with the notion of archetypes as it has been mainly popularized by Carl Gustav Jung. Nunn states rightly that Jung’s own understanding of and emphasis on archetypes changed considerably (...) during his lifetime. Therefore the difficulty is not only how to relate memes to archetypes, but also to distinguish that concept of archetypes to which memes relate from those to which they do not. (shrink)