In this rigorous investigation into the logic of truth Anil Gupta and Nuel Belnap explain how the concept of truth works in both ordinary and pathological..

OBJECTIVES: Life-sustaining treatment at the end of life gives rise to many ethical problems in Japan. Recent surveys of Japanese physicians suggested that they tend to treat terminally ill patients aggressively. We studied why Japanese physicians were reluctant to withhold or withdraw life-support from terminally ill patients and what affected their decisions. DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS: A qualitative study design was employed, using a focus group interview with seven physicians, to gain an in-depth understanding of attitudes and rationales in Japan regarding (...) medical care at the end of life. RESULTS: Analysis revealed that physicians and patients' family members usually make decisions about life-sustaining treatment, while the patients' wishes are unavailable or not taken into account. Both physicians and family members tend to consider withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment as abandonment or even killing. The strongest reason to start cardiopulmonary resuscitation- and to continue it until patients' family members arrive-seems to be the family members' desire to be at the bedside at the time of death. All physicians participating in our study regarded advance directives that provide information as to patients' wishes about life-sustaining treatment desirable. All expressed concern, however, that it would be difficult to forego or discontinue life-support based on a patient's advance directive, particularly when the patient's family opposed the directive. CONCLUSION: Our group interview suggested several possible barriers to death with dignity and the appropriate use of advance directives in Japan. Further qualitative and quantitative research in this regard is needed. (shrink)

Traditional explanations of multistable visual phenomena (e.g. ambiguous figures, perceptual rivalry) suggest that the basis for spontaneous reversals in perception lies in antagonistic connectivity within the visual system. In this review, we suggest an alternative, albeit speculative. explanation for visual multistability - that spontaneous alternations reflect responses to active, programmed events initiated by brain areas that integrate sensory and non-sensory information to coordinate a diversity of behaviors. Much evidence suggests that perceptual reversals are themselves more closely related to the expression (...) of a behavior than to passive sensory responses: (1) they are initiated spontaneously, often voluntarily, and are influenced by subjective variables such as attention and mood; (2) the alternation process is greatly facilitated with practice and compromised by lesions in non- visual cortical areas; (3) the alternation process has temporal dynamics similar to those of spontaneously initiated behaviors; (4) functional imaging reveals that brain areas associated with a variety of cognitive behaviors are specifically activated when vision becomes unstable. In this scheme, reorganizations of activity throughout the visual cortex, concurrent with perceptual reversals, are initiated by higher, largely non- sensory brain centers. Such direct intervention In the processing of the sensory input by brain structures associated with planning and motor programming might serve an important role in perceptual organization, particularly in aspects related to selective attention. (shrink)

Sufficient texts show that for aristotle the universal notion expresses the same real thing as the particular, Though in a different way. His grounds for a universal so conceived are twofold. First, In every sensible thing there is a basic formal principle that, Though individual, Brings each instance into formal identity with all the other instances. Secondly, In human intellectual cognition there is an active principle that raises knowledge above the status of photographing or registering or cataloguing, And actualizes what (...) was only potential in the real thing. In knowing sensible things universally, The human intellect is able to grasp the concrete thing as characterized by a formal nature, Thereby knowing it in a way that holds equally for all other instances. Though patently incomplete, This conception of the universal is free from internal contradictions. It provides a framework for fruitful discussion, And remains a challenge. (shrink)

I think--though this is not completely clear--that it would be accurate in the situation which I have envisaged, for me to say to you 'Once you were me,' and for you to say this to me. For suppose we represent our joint life-history in the obvious way by a big Y. The left arm is not the right arm, and neither arm is the pedestal; but the word 'me' does not denote the present part of my life-history, represented by the (...) left arm, nor any other part of my life-history, but rather denotes the person whose life history is represented by the pedestal plus the left arm, and the word 'you' similarly denotes the person whose life history is represented by the pedestal plus the right arm. These two persons were ex hypothesi one and the same person before the fission, and given that pronouns have the reference just indicated, 'Once you were me' seems a correct way of describing this fact. 'Once I was you' would of course do as well; for it doesn't mean 'Once I was you and there was no me,' which of course I cannot admit, but just 'Once I was you,' and that is fair enough. My memory of the sardine feast can then be expressed by 'I remember eating those sardines when I was you'. (shrink)

Seminar papers on the philosophical thoughts of the people of Bangladesh.

1. Philosophy, or the nature of philosophical knowledge, is defined as darsana, which means "seeing" or "vision." Seeing is, perhaps, the best instance of what we mean by "direct experience"; in this sense, Indian philosophy is "empirical." Its empiricism is, however, an "empiricism without limits." I shall not discuss here whether "seeing," "hearing," etc., are instances of immediate experience, or of mediate knowledge. If we see with the eyes, or through them, it may be argued that seeing and hearing, etc., (...) are instances of mediate knowledge. But the motive in defining the nature of philosophical knowledge as darsana or "vision" is that Indian philosophy distrusts abstract reasoning or knowledge. Philosophy is not, according to Indian philosophy, primarily a "theory" about reality but an experience of reality: an experience verified or verifiable. The Vedänta is the "end" of knowledge in the sense that knowledge ends in experience: in direct realization. This is the meaning of the Vedäntic statement: we cannot know Brahman but we can be Brahman. The nature of ultimate reality is atarkyam, "non-logical," as the Upanisads say. This does not mean that logic should not be used as a method or that logical knowledge has no use. Logical knowledge gives knowledge of "existence" in some sense, e.g., if I say, "No statement is true," then, this statement is, at least, true: therefore it exists. Whereas philosophy as darsana is an intuition of the existent and not of existence. In a certain sense, there is no problem for Indian philosophy of the reality and proof of the external world. The Katha Upanisad says that the senses are "pierced outwards"; "therefore, they see external objects": tasmät parang pasyati. But why the expression "external world" if there is not another world in some sense? However this may be, it is an historical fact that, in its quest for the Real, Indian thought changed from the objective to the subjective method: its search for the reality of the objective universe was through its search for the inner essence of man's being. The Katha Upanisad speaks of seeing "with eyes turned within": ävratta çaksu. The conception of philosophy as darsana corresponds to Plato's definition of the Dialectic as "the eye of the soul": "not implanting eyes, for they exist already, but giving them a right direction which they have not." Philosophy as darsana is the sight of "those who have eyes to see," though not the sight of "those who see only what they want to see." Darsana as defined is "discovery": there is in it, or through it, an unveiling of Reality. Darsana is a perceptual or "intuitive" situation in which the existent is beheld "face to face"; pratyagätänamaiksat: "beheld the Atman face to face": but this relation of "face to face" cannot properly be described as an "encounter," if this means seeing another. (shrink)

В работе обсуждаются естественнонаучные и антинатуралистические концепции, редукционистики и холистический подходы и т.п. Для всех, кто интересуется проблемой сознания.

The last chapter of Politian's first Miscellanea dealt with the amica silentia lunae through which the Greeks sailed back to Troy . He argued that the phrase should not be taken literally, as a statement that Troy fell at the new moon, but in an extended sense, as a poetic indication that the moon had not yet risen when the Greeks set sail. This reading had one merit: it explained how Virgil's moon could be silent while the Greeks were en (...) route but shine during the battle for the city . Yet Politian's effort to identify the phase of the moon described by Virgil was anything but clear: Non igitur aut sera fuerit aut pernox luna, tum nec lunae quidem omnino coitus, sed tempus arbitror potius quamdiu illa non luceret. Accordingly, though his arguments were sometimes repeated by commentators and teachers, they won little assent from scholars who occupied themselves seriously with the passage. In his Adversaria Turnebus took silentia lunae as referring ‘ad noctis taciturnitatem…non ad interlunium’. In the first chapter of his De rebus per epistolam quaesitis Giano Parrasio sharply criticised the fuzziness of Politian's explanation: ‘Ambages istae sunt, ambages’. More important, he quoted a line from the Little Iliad: νξ μν ην μέσση, λαμπρ δ' πέτελλε σελήνη. This he rendered ‘Nox erat intempesta, nitebat et aurea coelo Luna’, and inferred from it that the moon had been up when Troy fell. In his Virgilius collation scriptorum Graecorum illustratus, finally, Fulvio Orsini published a scholium on Euripides' Hecuba, one which quoted both the line from the Little Iliad and an analysis of it by the Peripatetic Callisthenes. He too took the line as refuting Politian. (shrink)

A. N. Williams examines the conception of the intellect in patristic theology from its beginnings in the work of the Apostolic Fathers to Augustine and Cassian in the early fifth century. The patristic notion of intellect emerges from its systematic relations to other components of theology: the relation of human mind to the body and the will; the relation of the human to the divine intellect; of human reason to divine revelation and secular philosophy; and from the use of the (...) intellect in both theological reflection and spiritual contemplation. The patristic conception of that intellect is therefore important for the way it signals the character of early Christian theology as both systematic and contemplative and as such, distinctive in its approach from secular philosophies of its time and modern Christian theology. (shrink)

The communicative aspects of the contents of consciousness are analyzed in the framework of a neural network model of animal communication. We discuss some issues raised by Gray, such as the control of the contents of consciousness, the adaptive value of consciousness, conscious and unconscious behaviors, and the nature of a model's consciousness.