Unlike majority of classical and contemporary Indian philosophers, Gandhi was a practical philosopher, an experimentalist and a laboratiorian who developed practical instruments and carried out experiments for the existing life problems without bothering to build a consistent structure of philosophy. For this very reason there seems an ambiguity to call Gandhi as a philosopher. However, it seems to me that Gandhi was a practical philosopher who laid a pragmatic approach and method to his new insights for social and political action (...) of national movement and the reconstruction of modern India without disturbing the social equilibrium.Gandhi exercised such tremendous skill in cooperative participation of our national movement and is rudely regarded as the “Father of pridely Nation”. As he is too skillfully organized his ideals in building a nation he rightfully ascertained as philosopher in the light of Homer’s (the Greek poet) definition to a philosopher. The same practical method is extended to the aspect of religion by Gandhi. (shrink)

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

The advent of techniques of sex selection that rely on assisted reproduction led to a questioning of whether sex selection should be deemed always and everywhere unethical. While China and India are normally associated with condemned practices, they are also implicated in processes that constitute globally stratified sex selection inclusive of its more valued form, often referred to as family balancing. Through an application of Ong and Collier’s concept of global assemblage, I demonstrate how family balancing, which has taken on (...) a “global form,” is tied to an “assemblage” of factors related to the anti-natal, population control contexts that have been pervasive in Asia. Three simultaneously occurring processes since the mid-1990s constituted stratified sex selection: the surfacing of China and India as figurative counter examples in deliberations of ethics on new techniques; active national surveillance of sex ratios as well as denunciation and criminalization of sex selective abortion in China and India; and the role of China and India in neoliberalizing population control and developing globalized markets in reproduction. Accounting for globally stratified sex selection requires a more robust interpretation of ethics that rethinks disciplinary approaches just as much as relativist ones in which respect for individual autonomy tends to overtake all other concerns. (shrink)

Consumer-based datasets are the products of data brokerage firms that agglomerate millions of personal records on the adult US population. This big data commodity is purchased by both companies and individual clients for purposes such as marketing, risk prevention, and identity searches. The sheer magnitude and population coverage of available consumer-based datasets and the opacity of the business practices that create these datasets pose emergent ethical challenges within the computational social sciences that have begun to incorporate consumer-based datasets into empirical (...) research. To directly engage with the core ethical debates around the use of consumer-based datasets within social science research, I first consider two case study applications of consumer-based dataset-based scholarship. I then focus on three primary ethical dilemmas within consumer-based datasets regarding human subject research, participant privacy, and informed consent in conversation with the principles of the seminal Belmont Report. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt a un problème avec la philosophie. Si elle en joue et provoque, le trait s’avère constant, tout au long de sa vie, publique comme privée. Jamais elle ne cacha son peu d’appétence pour les « diseur[s] professionnel[s] de vérité »1. Elle poussa même le vice jusqu’à déclarer, en réponse à Günther Gauss qui, lors d’une célèbre entrevue datant de 1964 et tel le frais cabri qui, avec candeur et bonheur, se dirige guilleret, primesautier, vers la surprise party que (...) donne le loup en son... (shrink)

This article investigates the effect of perceived uncertainty on two types of screening strategies – exclusion and inclusion. Results from five studies showed that perceived uncertainty inc...

We present and contrast two accounts of cooperative communication, both based on Active Inference, a framework that unifies biological and cognitive processes. The mental alignment account, defended in Vasil et al., takes the function of cooperative communication to be the alignment of the interlocutor's mental states, and cooperative communicative behavior to be driven by an evolutionarily selected adaptive prior belief favoring the selection of action policies that promote such an alignment. We argue that the mental alignment account should be rejected (...) because it neglects the action-oriented nature of cooperative communication, which skews its view of the dynamics of communicative interaction. We introduce our own conception of cooperative communication, inspired by a more radical ecological interpretation of the active inference framework. Cooperative communication, on our ecological conception, serves to guide and constrain the dynamics of the cooperative interaction via the construction and restructuring of shared fields of affordances, in order to reach the local goals of the joint actions in which episodes of cooperative communication are embedded. We argue that our ecological conception provides a better theoretical standpoint to account for the action-oriented nature of cooperative communication in the active inference framework. (shrink)

Rémi Tison Dans cet article, je traite de la nature des processus cognitifs sous-tendant nos attributions d’états mentaux aux animaux non humains. Selon la conception traditionnelle, nous n’avons qu’un accès indirect aux états mentaux d’autrui, qui doivent être inférés sur la base du comportement. Cette conception traditionnelle influence autant les débats conceptuels concernant l’esprit des animaux que les recherches empiriques sur la cognition animale. Or de récents travaux sur la cognition sociale humaine avancent plutôt une conception « interactionniste », selon (...) laquelle les états mentaux peuvent parfois être directement perçus dans le comportement. J’applique dans cet article la conception interactionniste à l’attribution d’états mentaux aux animaux. Je conclus que celle-ci rend mieux compte des attitudes du sens commun à l’égard des états mentaux des animaux et est plus féconde pour la recherche empirique sur la cognition animale que la conception traditionnelle. (shrink)

Considering the urgency of addressing grand challenges that affect human health and achieving the ambitious health targets set by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, the role of business in improving health has become critical. Yet, our systematic review of the business–health literature reveals that business research focuses primarily on occupational health and safety, health care organizations, and health regulations. To embrace the health externalities generated by business activities, we propose that future research should investigate the conditions under which business (...) articulates and participates in health challenges, engages in multilevel actions toward tackling health challenges, and improves health outcomes and its impact on the health of external stakeholders, including customers and local communities. We also urge business scholars to engage with the public health research community to increase impact. (shrink)

In this article, I examine reproductive travel for sex selection with reference to two distinct technologies—MicroSort and preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Available since the 1990s for sex-linked disease avoidance, I focus here on their imbrication in an emerging global form of nonmedical, lifestyle sex selection that elicits movements of information, biomaterial, patients, providers, and equipment across borders. This web of cross-border, interclinical, and laboratory transactions raises issues highly relevant to a feminist approach to the bioethics of sex selection. International documents, however, (...) have yet to account for their implication in an increasingly stratified system of global sex selection practices. (shrink)

The commercialization of egg freezing for fertility preservation spawned a market in information and education as much as in clinical services. Even before there was a technically viable mode to freeze eggs, Christy Jones envisioned “educational seminars” as a key “marketing and education” programmatic strategy in her 2004 contest-winning business plan for an egg freezing company at Harvard Business School. A decade and a half after Jones first proposed them, in-person informational events have become an industry trend. Given the transparent (...) objective of recruiting paying clients, these events must inevitably combine persuasion with education. Through participant observation at three such information sessions held by different clinics in a large city in the eastern US, I present an analysis of their content and form. The article examines the extent to which these events adhered to guidelines on securing informed consent and how the form of these events produce a complex blend of affect and sociality that likely affect how information is received. I argue that egg freezing informational events employ subtle techniques of persuasion that cultivate anxiety and link egg freezing to desirable traits or lifestyles through social enactment. (shrink)

We show that MRP + MA implies that ITP(λ, ω 2 ) holds for all cardinal λ ≥ ω 2 . This generalizes a result by Weiß who showed that PFA implies that ITP(λ, ω 2 ) holds for all cardinal λ ≥ ω 2 . Consequently any of the known methods to prove MRP + MA consistent relative to some large cardinal hypothesis requires the existence of a strongly compact cardinal. Moreover if one wants to force MRP + MA (...) with a proper forcing, it requires at least a supercompact cardinal. We also study the relationship between MRP and some weak versions of square. We show that MRP implies the failure of □(λ, ω) for all λ ≥ ω 2 and we give a direct proof that MRP + MA implies the failure of □(λ, ω 1 ) for all λ ≥ ω 2. (shrink)

This paper examines the question of why consumers engage in ethical consumption. The authors draw on self-affirmation theory to propose that the choice of an ethical product serves a self-restorative function. Four experiments provide support for this assertion: a self-threat increases consumers’ choice of an ethical option, even when the alternative choice is objectively superior in quantity (Study 1) and product quality (Study 2). Further, restoring self-esteem through positive feedback eliminates this increase in ethical choice (Studies 2 and 3). As (...) an additional test of the robustness of our results, a final study examined the effect of self-threat on choice in a field setting (Study 4). The findings indicate that ethical purchases are not just altruistic. They hold purposeful individual value and can help in the self-restorative process. Implications for managers making decisions regarding investment in ethical product features are discussed. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose an argumentation formalism that allows for both deductive and abductive argumentation, where ‘deduction’ is used as an umbrella term for both defeasible and strict ‘forward’ inference. Our formalism is based on an extended version of our previously proposed information graph formalism, which provides a precise account of the interplay between deductive and abductive inference and causal and evidential information. In the current version, we consider additional types of information such as abstractions which allow domain experts (...) to be more expressive in stating their knowledge, where we identify and impose constraints on the types of inferences that may be performed with the different types of information. A new notion of attack is defined that captures a crucial aspect of abductive reasoning, namely that of competition between abductively inferred alternative explanations. Our argumentation formalism generates an abstract argumentation framework and thus allows arguments to be formally evaluated. We prove that instantiations of our argumentation formalism satisfy key rationality postulates. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce an ecological account of communication according to which acts of communication are active inferences achieved by affecting the behavior of a target organism via the modification of its field of affordances. Constraining a target organism’s behavior constitutes a mechanism of socially extended active inference, allowing organisms to proactively regulate their inner states through the behavior of other organisms. In this general conception of communication, the type of cooperative communication characteristic of human communicative interaction is a (...) way of constraining interaction dynamics toward the goals of a given joint action by constructing and altering shared fields of affordances. This account embraces a pragmatist view according to which communication is a form of action aiming to influence the behavior of a target, and stands against the traditional transmission view according to which communication fundamentally serves to convey information. Understanding acts of communication as active inference under an ecological interpretation allows us to link communicative and ultimately linguistic behavior to the biological imperative of minimizing free energy and to emphasize the action-oriented nature of communicative interaction. (shrink)

A new method of observation is currently emerging in psychiatry, based on data collection and behavioral profiling of smartphone users. Numerical phenotyping is a paradigmatic example. This behavioral investigation method uses computerized measurement tools in order to collect characteristics of different psychiatric disorders. First, it is necessary to contextualize the emergence of these new methods and to question their promises and expectations. The international mental health research framework invites us to reflect on methodological issues and to draw conclusions from certain (...) impasses related to the clinical complexity of this field. From this contextualization, the investigation method relating to digital phenotyping can be questioned in order to identify some of its potentials. These new methods are also an opportunity to test psychoanalysis. It is then necessary to identify the elements of fruitful analysis that clinical experience and research in psychoanalysis have been able to deploy regarding the challenges of digital technology. An analysis of this theme's litterature shows that psychoanalysis facilitates a reflection on the psychological effects related to digital methods. It also shows how it can profit from the research potential offered by new technical tools, considering the progress that has been made over the past fifty years. This cross-fertilization of the potential and limitations of digital methods in mental health intervention in the context of theoretical issues at the international level invites us to take a resolutely non-reductionist position. In the field of research, psychoanalysis offers a specific perspective that can well be articulated to an epistemology of networks. Rather than aiming at a numerical phenotyping of patients according to the geneticists' model, the case formulation method appears to be a serious prerequisite to give a limited and specific place to the integration of smartphones in clinical investigation. (shrink)

Over the past twenty years, the concept of intermediality has emerged as a strategic response that has sought to bypass some of the ills that have plagued the university as an institution.1 Indeed, defined as the study of “nodes of relations, of relationship movements slow enough to seem immobile”, intermediality as an approach has helped fight against the hyper-specialization of research in the humanities. By conceiving of relationships as paramount, it has made it possible to view as counterintuitive the fragmented (...) approach to the real and its representations. Thereby, the social and cultural environment has been relocated to the center of analyses.. (shrink)

“Doğal din” terimi, bazen doğanın kendisinin ilahi olduğu bir panteistik doktrine atıfta bulunur. “Doğal teoloji” terimi ise aksine, başlangıçta gözlemlenen doğal gerçekler temelinde (ve bazen) Tanrı’nın varlığını savunmaya yönelik projeye atıfta bulunur. Bununla birlikte çağdaş felsefede, hem “doğal din” hem de “doğal teoloji” genel olarak, dinî veya teolojik konuları araştırmak için insana, “doğal” olan bilişsel yetilerini – akıl, algı, içgözlem- kullanma projesini ifade eder. Doğal din veya teoloji, mevcut anlayış üzerine, doğayla ilgili ampirik araştırmalarla sınırlı olmamakla birlikte ayrıca panteistik bir (...) sonuçla da bağlantılı değildir. Bununla birlikte o, özel doğal olmayan yetilere (ESP, telepati, mistik deneyim) veya doğaüstü bilgi kaynaklarına (kutsal metinler, vahiy teolojisi, inanç otoriteleri, doğrudan doğaüstü iletişim) hitap etmekten kaçınır. Genel olarak, doğal din veya teoloji (bundan böyle “doğal teoloji” olarak anılacaktır), diğer felsefi ve bilimsel girişimlerle aynı rasyonel inceleme standartlarına uymayı amaçlamaktadır ve aynı değerlendirme ve eleştiri yöntemlerine tabidir. (shrink)

Mitos ve Logos kavramları Antik Yunan uygarlığında söz kavramına karşılık gelen sözcükleri karşılamak için kullanılmıştır. Felsefe tarihinin başlangıcı için yapılan tanımlamalarda ise mitos kavramının yerine logos kavramının tercih edilmesi iki kavram arasında bir farklılığı ortaya koymak için yapılmaktadır. Bu ayrımın nedeni ise mitos’un daha çok dinsel içerikle anılması logos’un ise içerisinde bir tür akılsallık barındırması şeklindeki yorumlarda kendini göstermektedir. Ancak söz konusu ayrımın ilk doğa filozofu/ilk felsefeci olarak nitelendirilen Thales için geçerli olup olmadığı geçmişte olduğu gibi günümüzde de halen tartışılmaktadır. (...) Felsefe tarihi yazımlarında ilk sıraya konan Thales’in anılan kavramları gerçekten farklı şekilde yorumlayıp yorumlamadığı bizce de tartışmaya açık bir husustur. Bu açıdan bakıldığında Thales, söz konusu kavramları iki farklı problemler alanı olarak mı görmüştür? Onun düşüncelerinde kendinden önceki mitolojik mirasın izleri bulunabilir mi? O, katışıksız bir rasyonel midir, yoksa henüz felsefenin yeni filizlendiği bir toplumda bir ara basamağı mı temsil etmektedir? Bu makalenin içerisinde tartışacağımız bu sorular, felsefe tarihinin başlangıcına ilişkin kavramsal arka planın ne olduğu hakkında bize katkı sağlayacaktır. (shrink)

Après une présentation de l’évolution du solde commercial sino-étasunien ( Partie I ), cet article proposedeux méthodes de mesure de l’échange inégal entre les États-Unis et la Chine, l’une considérant le contenu en travail directement incorporé dans l’échange ( Partie II ), l’autre, inspirée de Ricci (2018), centrée sur la valeur internationale et mobilisant des tableaux entrées-sorties ( Partie III ), permettant d’esquisser une synthèse d’analyse sectorielle ( Partie IV ).

The role of antibody-antigen affinity and concentrations in adaptive antibody response is analyzed in a framework of probabilistic inventory model for antibody production. Our results indicate significant differences in optimal behaviours of low, moderate and high affinity groups and offer important implications. Interestingly, the involved approach is also of relevance in other production systems. Directions for its applications in industries and information sciences are also presented.

Cassirer and Panofsky: A Philosophical Misunderstanding This paper argues that German art historian and iconologist Erwin Panofsky unintentionally misused the concept of "symbolic form" coined by his friend and colleague, philosopher Ernst Cassirer. Although both shared the same neo-Kantian background, I contend that Panofsky clung to Kant’s dualistic theory of knowledge, while Cassirer explicitly adopted a non-dualistic way of thinking largely inspired by Goethean morphology. That is why Panofsky could distinguish between the "natural" space of perception and the cultural space (...) of artistic representation, when Cassirer refused such a possibility. In so doing, Panofsky proved that he totally missed Cassirer’s point: according to the philosopher of symbolic forms, there is no such thing as a "nature," unless this "nature" is grasped as inherently cultural and historical. (shrink)

To celebrate forty years of publication, we asked people new to bioethics to tell us what should be next on the docket. We received 195 essays. Here are four we especially like. Bioethics has, until now, focused mainly on those who directly influence human health. It worked to establish guidelines for doctors to follow when treating their patients, and it provided a backbone for ethical human research. Bioethics has done a lot of good, but it is time for the field (...) to branch out to things that affect human health in less obvious ways. Of the things that bioethics must turn its focus to, one of the most pressing issues is establishing a duty of care between pharmaceutical companies and the people they .. (shrink)

In 2012, two major professional societies representing Europe and the United States released influential statements that would propel a commercial market for social egg freezing, in which women bank their oocytes for later use in order to avoid compromised fertility that comes with age. While the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology condoned SEF based on reproductive autonomy and justice, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine discouraged SEF based on insufficient data and concerns about false hope. In this article, (...) we map the contexts and discursive moves by which the biomedicalization of SEF proceeded since 2012. We compare professional bioethical arguments that made the case to approve SEF in Europe with news and popular media discourse that formed and shaped the commercial marketization of SEF in the United States despite the recommendation of the ASRM. While a statist pronatalist perspective informed the former, a distinctly private labor market recruitment strategy utilizing a Lean In efficiency model of feminism buttressed the latter. (shrink)

In the model theory of modules the Ziegler spectrum, the space of indecomposable pure-injective modules, has played a key role. We investigate the possibility of defining a similar space in the context of G-sets where G is a group.

Un carottage effectué dans le marais de Malia a permis de reconstituer les grandes étapes de l'évolution de l'environnement du site archéologique entre 6500 av. J.-C. et aujourd'hui. L'étude ne prend en compte, pour l'instant, que les données sédimentaires et des datations au carbone 14. Plusieurs séquences ont été identifiées. La première (6400-4700 av. J.-C.) correspond au remplissage de la dépression, la deuxième (4700-1500 av. J.-C.) voit se former et évoluer le marais lui-même, la troisième (non datée) révèle un événement (...) marin bref, la quatrième (190 av. J.-C.-414 ap. J.-C.) traduit la réinstallation brutale du marais, la cinquième (de 414 ap. J.-C. à nos jours) montre que la surface du marais évolue en fonction du tracé plus ou moins interne du cordon littoral. Il se peut que la séquence 3 corresponde au tsunami engendré par l'explosion du volcan de Santorin mais il est également possible qu'il corresponde au tremblement de terre de 365 ap. J.-C. qui a provoqué un mouvement de bascule important de la Crète, le coin Sud-Ouest se soulevant de 8 à 10 m, le secteur Nord-oriental s'enfonçant simultanément. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an account of linguistic content based on the active inference framework. While ecological and enactive theorists have rightly rejected the notion of content as a basis for cognitive processes, they must recognize the important role that it plays in the social regulation of linguistic interaction. According to an influential theory in philosophy of language, normative inferentialism, an utterance has the content that it has in virtue of its normative status, that is, in virtue of the (...) set of commitments and entitlements that the speaker undertakes by producing this utterance. This normative status is determined by the normative attitudes shared by members of the utterer’s linguistic community. I propose here an account of such normative attitudes based on the ecological interpretation of the active inference framework. I explain how social normativity can be understood in that framework as the way in which members of a group shape their social niche to make it more predictable. Finally, I apply this account of social normativity to basic communicative practices, thereby explaining how social normative expectations can emerge to regulate these communicative practices, eventually leading to the institution of the sort of normative statuses constitutive of linguistic content. (shrink)

Modal ontolojik argüman, Tanrı’nın varlığını sadece bilfiil gerçek olan bu dünyada değil, bütün mümkün dünyalarda göstermeye yönelik bir argümandır. Anselm’in (1033-1109) Proslogion adlı eserinin 3. bölümünde “kendisinden daha büyüğü düşünülemeyen” şeklinde tanımlanan; Tanrı’nın var olmamasının da düşünülemeyeceğini, bu yüzden de varolmamasının imkansızlığı üzerinde kurulu yeni bir argüman bulunduğunu öne süren bazı araştırmacılar, bu argümanı mümkün dünyalar semantiği yardımıyla formüle edip, “modal ontolojik argüman” şeklinde adlandırmışlardır. Çok farklı şekillerde formüle edilmiş bu argüman kabaca Tanrı’nın mümkünse zorunlu olması, dolayısıyla bilfiil gerçek olan (...) bu dünyada da var olması gerektiğini savunur. (shrink)

Cet article analyse les évolutions des positions de Marx à propos de la colonisation. Il souligne tout d’abord l’invariant de ces réflexions : la dénonciation de la violence coloniale. Au départ, on trouve une interprétation de la colonisation comme processus de modernisation, puis comme dynamique de destruction-régénération, liée à l’« unification du monde ». L’auteur identifie spécialement les inflexions successives de la pensée de Marx – résolument critique –, au sujet des questions coloniale et nationale, du caractère non linéaire de (...) l’histoire, mais aussi de la différenciation des formations sociales. (shrink)