Yoga has come to be an icon of Indian culture and civilization, and it is widely regarded as being timeless and unchanging. Based on extensive ethnographic research and an analysis of both ancient and modern texts, Yoga in Modern India challenges this popular view by examining the history of yoga, focusing on its emergence in modern India and its dramatically changing form and significance in the twentieth century. Joseph Alter argues that yoga's transformation into a popular activity idolized (...) for its health value is based on modern ideas about science and medicine. Alter centers his analysis on an interpretation of the seminal work of Swami Kuvalayananda, one of the chief architects of the Yoga Renaissance in the early twentieth century. From this point of orientation he explores current interpretations of yoga and considers how practitioners of yogic medicine and fitness combine the ideas of biology, physiology, and anatomy with those of metaphysics, transcendence, and magical power. The first serious ethnographic history of modern yoga in India, this fluently written book is must reading not only for students and scholars but also practitioners who seek a deeper understanding of how yoga developed over time into the exceedingly popular phenomenon it is today. (shrink)

Nationalism can be closely associated with powerful feelings about the relationship among cultural heritage, identity and embodied experience. Almost by definition this relationship is expressed in terms of continuity, distinctiveness and the purity of tradition, to an extent that nationalistic sentiments can be said to be ‘visceral.’ Contrasting the way in which the body is implicated in nature cure and Ayurveda, two forms of medicine closely linked to nationalism in India, this article presents an analytical perspective on the embodiment of (...) viscerality to provide a more nuanced understanding of how these experiences blur distinctions of cultural continuity and how an ecology of the body shapes the cultural politics of tradition in India. (shrink)

An anthropological perspective on biosemiosis raises important questions about sociality, ecology and communication in contexts that encompass many different forms of life. As such, these questions are important for understanding the problem of religion in relation to social theory, as well as understanding our collective, biosocial animal history and the development of human culture, as an articulation of power, on an evolutionary time scale. The argument presented here is that biosemiotics provides a framework for extending Talal Asad’s genealogical critique of (...) religion to culture more broadly, providing an important perspective on power in relation to communication and in relation to the ‘supernatural’ attributes of language in a multi-species environment of signs and sign relationships. (shrink)

Born into a poor, Muslim family at the end of the 19th century, Gama became World Champion wrestler by defeating the reigning Polish champion in London in 1910. By focusing on the life of Gama, the heroic representations of Gama that appear in the Hindi language literature, and the transformations in wrestling regimens that have occurred over the past several centuries, I locate the discourse and practice of wrestling within a context of intersecting concerns with nationalism, class identity and embodied (...) consciousness. To articulate the way in which subaltern identity is embodied in relation to nationalist ideas about masculine fitness, and in relation to the state as a political institution, I provide an analytic interpretation of the heroic body that focuses on themes of nervousness and obsession. (shrink)

Wisdom is peculiarly abstract, ineffable, and yet perennial. It is also temporal, stretching forwards as well is backwards in time. Wisdom is often treated as the outcome of life experience, reflection, discipline, and equanimity. Capturing the Ineffable aims to establish wisdom as an area if inquiry within anthropology and an analytic account of wisdom and its role and focus in anthropology. In addition to developing theories for an anthropology (and excavation) of wisdom, this volume argues collectively that anthropology is especially (...) well suited to engage in questioning what it is that is called wisdom, and how wisdom, as a concept, and an enacted activity, functions in metaphysical and interpersonal experiences, values, and judgements. The contributors include many key US and UK thinkers. (shrink)

The tendency to test outcomes that are predicted by our current theory (the confirmation bias) is one of the best-known biases of human decision making. We prove that the confirmation bias is an optimal strategy for testing hypotheses when those hypotheses are deterministic, each making a single prediction about the next event in a sequence. Our proof applies for two normative standards commonly used for evaluating hypothesis testing: maximizing expected information gain and maximizing the probability of falsifying the current hypothesis. (...) This analysis rests on two assumptions: (a) that people predict the next event in a sequence in a way that is consistent with Bayesian inference; and (b) when testing hypotheses, people test the hypothesis to which they assign highest posterior probability. We present four behavioral experiments that support these assumptions, showing that a simple Bayesian model can capture people's predictions about numerical sequences (Experiments 1 and 2), and that we can alter the hypotheses that people choose to test by manipulating the prior probability of those hypotheses (Experiments 3 and 4). (shrink)

The inclusion of morally binding values such as religious—or in a broader sense, spiritual—values fundamentally alter organizational decision-making and ethical behavior. Family firms, being a particularly value-driven type of organization, provide ample room for religious beliefs to affect family, business, and individual decisions. The influence that the owning family is able to exert on value formation and preservation in the family business makes religious family firms an incubator for value-driven and faith-led decision-making and behavior. They represent a particularly rich (...) and relevant context to re-assess the relationship between ethical beliefs, decision-making processes and behaviors in business organizations at the interface between family and professional logics. This Special Issue is dedicated to deepening our understanding of the role religious values and spirituality play in the formation of organizational ethical practices in faith-led family firms and resulting organizational and family-related outcomes. In this editorial, we introduce the 10 papers included in this Special Issue, which investigate the relationship between religion or spirituality and family firm ethical behavior in various geographical, cultural and religious contexts, using a multitude of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. By focusing on the effects of religious or spiritual orientations on both the business and the family, as well as on the values, norms and goals present in the family business system, further research can gain a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between religious and spiritual believes, and sustainable ethical behavior in family firms. (shrink)

What, precisely, is `salt'? It is a certainwhite, solid, crystalline, material, alsocalled sodium chloride. Does any of that solidwhite stuff exist in the sea? – Clearly not.One can make salt from sea water easily enough,but that fact does not establish thatsalt, as such, is present in brine. (Paper andink can be made into a novel – but no novelactually exists in a stack of blank paper witha vial of ink close by.) When salt dissolves inwater, what is present is no (...) longer `salt' butrather a collection of hydrated sodium cationsand chloride anions, neither of which isprecisely salt, nor is the collection. Theaqueous material in brine is also significantlydifferent from pure water. Salt may beconsidered to be present in seawater, but onlyin a more or less vague `potential' way.Actually, there is no salt in the sea. In bothancient and modern treatments of otherimportant chemical concepts, including thenotions of `element', related complication,especially polysemy (terms with multiplemeanings), also occurs.In a recent paper, Paul Needham discussed the(predicable) properties of chemical substances,phases, and solutions. He provided a valuablecharacterization of cases in which severalquantities occupy the same space. He alsoconcluded that solution properties are not`intensive', because solvent and solute do nothave parts in common. He tacitly assumed thatingredients are not altered by their inclusionin a solution. This may be the case in somespecial cases (deutero-benzene dissolved inbenzene, say) but is not true in general – andcertainly does not apply to the case of brine,which Needham used as an example – since theions that exist in the solution, and also theaqueous material there, are quite differentfrom the pure ingredients used in making thesolution. An adequate theory of wholes andparts (mereology) must take into account thatwhen individuals enter combinations ofinteresting sorts they no longer are the verysame individuals that existed prior to thecomposition. It appears that no such formaltheory now actually exists. (shrink)

People often choose intuitive rather than equally valid nonintuitive alternatives. The authors suggest that these intuitive biases arise because intuitions often spring to mind with subjective ease, and the subjective ease leads people to hold their intuitions with high confidence. An investigation of predictions against point spreads found that people predicted intuitive options more often than equally valid nonintuitive alternatives. Critically, though, this effect was largely determined by people's confidence in their intuitions. Across naturalistic, expert, and laboratory samples, against personally (...) determined point spreads, and even when intuitive confidence was manipulated by altering irrelevant aspects of the decision context, the authors found that decreasing intuitive confidence reduced or eliminated intuitive biases. These findings indicate that intuitive biases are not inevitable but rather predictably determined by contextual variables that affect intuitive confidence. (shrink)

IntroductionWith a definition that is evolving, a serious component of the contract cheating issue involves individuals paying a third-party to complete assessment items for them and then submitting this work as if it were their own. The issue of contract cheating poses a significant problem for tertiary institutions. The research literature conducted to date has addressed contract cheating, yet few papers discuss theory-based prevention strategies, and even fewer still evaluate the impact of theory-based prevention strategies.Case descriptionThis paper discusses a case (...) study of contract cheating that was identified in a business simulation operating in a capstone unit at a large Australian university. The problem is outlined, the theory-based intervention is explained, and the impact on the contract cheating problem is quantified.Discussion and evaluationBuilding on a platform provided by criminological theory and crime prevention practice, the Unit Coordinator systematically adjusted a large number of assessment elements to ensure contract cheating was less likely. Importantly, this intervention was effective but also did not disadvantage students who were not engaging in contract cheating.ConclusionsOverall, this paper connects criminological theory and crime/problem prevention practice with academic misconduct issues with the intent of demonstrating there is potential to minimise the opportunity for contract cheating by altering the opportunity structures for assessment items. Crucially, this can be done without impeding genuine student efforts and does not depend on apprehension and conviction. (shrink)

The recent push to extend physician-aid-in-dying (PAD) to psychiatric conditions has significantly altered the ethical landscape surrounding psychiatric judgments concerning treatment-refractory il...

Philosophers have already recognized the importance of causal preemption involving “positive” events. First, preemption with positive events raises problems for counterfactual theories of causation. Second, theories of moral and legal responsibility rely heavily on the concept of causation, so accurately assessing responsibility in preemption cases requires correctly assessing their causal structure. However, philosophers have not discussed preemption involving “negative” events or omissions. This paper argues that cases of preemptive omissions exist and have important implications for theories of causation and for (...) moral and legal responsibility. Of theoretical importance, the alterations made to counterfactual theories of causation to address preemption with positive events do not seem to work for accommodating preemptive omissions. Of practical importance, there have been actual legal cases involving preemptive omissions, and at least one such case was, this paper contends, decided incorrectly on erroneous causal grounds. This paper identifies what must happen for preemptive omissions to obtain. It then argues for the existence of preemptive omissions by constructing a series of cases and drawing structural parallels between preemption cases with positive events and cases with omissions. It ultimately presents a formula for generating preemptive omissions and examines both why “traditional” methods of generating preemption fail for omissions and why the proposed method avoids such concerns. (shrink)

The concept of an altered state of consciousness may be clarified when three major issues are discussed: the phenomenon, its method of induction, and criteria for evaluating the phenomenon. An ASC is a mental state, but it is not clear how such a mental state is related to subjective experience and cognitive functioning. The relationship between the method of induction and the resulting ASC is also unclear at present. Finally, criteria for determining and evaluating the ASC are indistinguishable from the (...) phenomenon itself, leaving the latter ill-defined. These are the basic issues which are addressed in the theoretical formulation here presented. I propose that the cognitive mode distinguishing the normal waking state from an ASC is the mode of meaning employed. (shrink)

Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics has come under criticism for his treatment of the other. Generally these critiques charge that Gadamer fails to give the other due consideration and instead collapses her into a non-challenging conversational partner of the interpreter or listener. Robert Bernasconi, in his “‘You Don’t Know What I’m Talking About’: Alterity and the Hermeneutic Ideal” and “‘Y’All Don’t Hear Me Now’: On Lorenzo Simpson’s The Unfinished Project,” charges that the hermeneutic model of conversation is unable to respect the (...) alterity of an other that wishes to issue a truly radical critique of the conversation. Against this characterization I contend that Gadamer’s account of the other does indeed provide for an other that is neither assimilated nor prevented from announcing a thorough challenge, so long as the comparison that Gadamer draws between the hermeneutic task of reading a text and the relationship between the listener and the other is taken to its full extent. (shrink)

One of the main functions that introductory chemistry courses have fulfilled during the past century has been to provide evidence for the general validity of 'the atomic hypothesis.' A second function has been to demonstrate that an analytical approach has wide applicability in rationalizing many kinds of phenomena. Following R.G. Collingwood, these two functions can be recognized as related to a philosophical 'cosmology' (worldview, weltanshauung) that became dominant in the later Renaissance. Recent developments in many areas of science, and in (...) chemistry, have emphasized the central importance of understanding synthetic, developmental, and evolutionary aspects of nature. This paper argues that these scientific developments, and changes in other aspects of culture, amount to a widespread shift to an alternative cosmology, a quite different general worldview. To the extent that this is the case, introductory chemistry courses ought to be changed in fundamental ways. Rather that having a main focus on analysis to microscopic components, introductory chemistry instruction should emphasize current scientific understanding of the (synthetic) evolutionary origins of the present world. This altered approach would provide good preparation for future professional work, while also making better contact with the perceived concerns of students. (shrink)

In his critical response to our skeptical inquiry, “Does Culture Evolve?” , W. G. Runciman affirms that “Culture Does Evolve.” However, we find nothing in his essay that convinces us to alter our initial position. And we must confess that in composing an answer to Runciman, our first temptation was simply to urge those interested to read our original article—both as a basis for evaluating Runciman’s attempted refutation of it and as a framework for reading this essay, which addresses (...) in greater detail issues we have already raised. Runciman views the “selectionist paradigm” as a “scientific” “puzzle-solving device” now validated by an “expanding literature” that has successfully modeled social and cultural change as “evolutionary.” All paradigms, however, including scientific ones, give rise to self-validating “normal science.” The real issue, accordingly, is not whether explanations can be successfully manufactured on the basis of paradigmatic assumptions, but whether the paradigmatic assumptions are appropriate to the object of analysis. The selectionist paradigm requires the reduction of society and culture to inheritance systems that consist of randomly varying, individual units, some of which are selected, and some not; and with society and culture thus reduced to inheritance systems, history can be reduced to “evolution.” But these reductions, which are required by the selectionist paradigm, exclude much that is essential to a satisfactory historical explanation—particularly the systemic properties of society and culture and the combination of systemic logic and contingency. Now as before, therefore, we conclude that while historical phenomena can always be modeled selectionistically, selectionist explanations do no work, nor do they contribute anything new except a misleading vocabulary that anesthetizes history. (shrink)

Offering an alternative to the theories of Skinner and other behaviorists, Rychlak draws upon recent research to support his belief that people can alter the grounds for their behavior and assume greater responsibility for it.

The Native American Church is examined as an illustrative example in the political anthropology of consciousness. Specific attention is paid to the Supreme Court's ignoring of accepted research on this tradition and its sacrament, Peyote, in the case of Employment Division of Oregon v. Smith. An anthropological reaction to the Smith decision is constructed, focusing on ethnographic findings regarding Peyote that contradict the Supreme Court's ethnocentric assumptions. This paper argues that Peyote's Schedule I status is not supported by the ethnographic (...) findings. Peyote, as used in the Native American Church, is recognized as safe and therapeutic. It is also argued that the Supreme Court's rationale for denying Peyotist religious freedom is not supported by the ethnographic findings nor by legal precedent. Not only is the Native American's right to use Peyote a matter of freedom of religion, it also involves other rights such as the right to raise one's children in one's own culture and the right to be treated using a culturally relevant therapeutic modality. (shrink)

On September 17, 1994, Karl Popper died at the age of 92.He was described as the official opposition of the “ Vienna Circle”, the philosophical club which in the inter-war period was glamorous and which espoused the then popular doctrine of logical positivism, so-called. His relations with that club were friendly-hostile, to use the term with which he liked to characterize the relations between scientific researchers. He is the last of that generation (unless it is Carl G. Hempel, who, however, (...) sees himself as too young to belong there). The public aspect of Popper’s friendly-hostile relations with his Viennese peers was unfortunately more hostile than friendly. Somehow, philosophers have managed to keep the accounts open for too long. The end of the era is the time to close accounts so as to be able to go on with the job at hand, since the intermingling of personal affairs with objective knowledge is unhealthy. Yet most of the leading heirs of the “ Vienna Circle” still coast around the issues raised by Popper, and so they can neither overlook him nor quote him correctly. If past evidence is reliable here, then this will alter just about now. Is it? (shrink)

This is the second paper in a two-part series describing subject and family perspectives from the CENTURY-S (CENtral Thalamic Deep Brain Stimulation for the Treatment of Traumatic Brain InjURY-Safety) first-in-human invasive neurological device trial to achieve cognitive restoration in moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (msTBI). To participate, subjects were independently assessed to formally establish decision-making capacity to provide voluntary informed consent. Here, we report on post-operative interviews conducted after a successful trial of thalamic stimulation. All five msTBI subjects met (...) a pre-selected primary endpoint of at least a 10% improvement in completion time on Trail-Making-Test Part B, a marker of executive function. We describe narrative responses of subjects and family members, refracted against that success. Interviews following surgery and the stimulation trial revealed the challenge of adaptation to improvements in cognitive function and emotional regulation as well as altered (and restored) relationships and family dynamics. These improvements exposed barriers to social reintegration made relevant by recoveries once thought inconceivable. The study’s success sparked concerns about post-trial access to implanted devices, financing of device maintenance, battery replacement, and on-going care. Most subjects and families identified the need for supportive counseling to adapt to the new trajectory of their lives. (shrink)

Whitehead’s cosmology centers on the self-creation of actual occasions that perish as they come to be, but somehow do combine to constitute societies that are persistent agents and/or patients. “Instance Ontology” developed by D.W. Mertz concerns unification of relata into facts of relatedness by specific intensions. These two conceptual systems are similar in that they both avoid the substance-property distinction: they differ in their understanding of how basic units combine to constitute complex unities. “Process Structural Realism” (PSR) draws from both (...) of these approaches in developing an account of how combinations of processes may produce ontologically significant coherences. When a group of processes achieves such closure that a set of states recurs continually, the effects of that coherence differ from what would occur in the absence of that closure. Such altered effectiveness is an attribute of the system as a whole, and would have consequences. This indicates that the network of processes, as a unit, has ontological significance. The closed network of processes, together with the conditions that prevail, constitute the form of definiteness of the coherence. That form continues to obtain as long as the coherence persists. Constituents contribute to, rather than share, that characteristic. Aspects of some recent research in systems biology, microeconomics, and social psychology illustrate the application of PSR. (shrink)

Directional deep brain stimulation contacts provide greater spatial flexibility for therapy than traditional ring-shaped electrodes, but little is known about longitudinal changes of impedance and orientation. We measured monopolar and bipolar impedance of DBS contacts in 31 patients who underwent unilateral subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation as part of a randomized study. At different follow-up visits, patients were assigned new stimulation configurations and impedance was measured. Additionally, we measured the orientation of the directional lead during surgery, immediately after surgery, and (...) 1 year later. Here we contrast impedances in directional versus ring contacts with respect to local anatomy, active stimulation contact, and over time. Directional contacts display larger impedances than ring contacts. Impedances generally increase slightly over the first year of therapy, save for a transient decrease immediately post-surgery under general anesthesia during pulse generator placement. Local impedances decrease at active stimulation sites, and contacts in closest proximity to internal capsule display higher impedances than other anatomic sites. DBS leads rotate slightly in the immediate postoperative period but otherwise remain stable over the following year. These data provide useful information for setting clinical stimulation parameters over time. (shrink)

When a group of processes achieves such closure that a set of states of affairs recurs continually, then the effect of that coherence on the world differs from what would occur in the absence of that closure. Such altered effectiveness is an attribute of the system as a whole, and would have consequences. This indicates that the network of processes, as a unit, has ontological significance. Whenever a network of processes generates continual return to a limited set of states of (...) affairs, the system may function as a “whole”— with respect to appropriate interaction partners. The balance achieved by the processes provides the form of definiteness of a unified agent. The causal powers of such coherent aggregates are indeed just the powers of the “constituents acting in concert”. However, the components act in concert in the specific way they do only because of their inclusion in the closed set of interactions that defines the coherence. This renders the causal powers of the coherence defined by that closure non-redundant, and hence the coherence, as a unit, is ontologically significant. The form of definiteness that provides internal coherence also grounds external efficacy of the societal aggregation. The closure is a structural feature of the coherence — possibly, but not necessarily, apparent in spatial structuring. This approach can provide a unified account that includes quantum microphysics, systems biology, and the philosophy of organism ─ without reducing any of these to another. (shrink)

This article considers the roles played by brain images (e.g., from PET scans) in mass media as experienced by people suffering from mental illness, and as used by scientists and activist groups in demonstrating a biological basis for mental illness. Examining the rhetorical presentation of images in magazines and books, the article describes the persuasive power that brain images have in altering the understanding people have of their own body—their objective self. Analyzing first-person accounts of encounters with brain images, it (...) argues that people come to understand themselves as having neurotransmitter imbalances that are the cause of their illnesses via received facts and images of the brain, but that this understanding is incomplete and in tension with the sense that they are their brain. The article concludes by querying the emergence of a pharmaceutical self, in which one experiences one's brain as if on drugs, as a new form of objective self-fashioning. (shrink)

The following essay seeks to deploy, from Husserl to Levinas, the centrality of the problem of temporality. In truth, the understanding of temporality constitutes, properly said, that which identifies and differentiates all the authors of the phenomenological tradition. Which means: temporality is that from which all phenomenological breakthroughs are signified and given their very possibility. Our task is thus, through a reading of Husserl, Heidegger and Levinas, to reveal how temporality is reassessed in the history of phenomenology as well as (...) to show how the philosophy of E. Levinas opens, beyond Husserl and Heidegger but by rendering justice to them both, to a novel and unedited temporality: an irreducible temporality of alterity from whence 'presence' is suspended by another source of meaning than the intentional constitution of phenomenality. (shrink)

The experimental (apparent) space-time transformations connect coordinates altered by length contraction and clock retardation. When clocks are synchronized by means of light signals (Einstein–Poincaré procedure) or by slow clock transport, the experimental space-time. transformations assume the mathematical form of the “Extended space-time transformations”.(4) These reduce to the Lorentz–Poincaré transformations when one of the frames they connect is the fundamental inertial frame. If the synchronization procedure were perfect, the experimental space-time transformations would assume the form of Selleri’s inertial transformations.(5) The real (...) space-time transformations are those which are disclosed when the systematic measurement distortions are corrected. (shrink)

Originally published in 1983, _Reflections on Self Psychology_ records the development of a powerful initiative to alter psychoanalytic theory and practice, and an evaluative questioning of this initiative. It presents a dialogue that developed at the Boston Symposium of 1980 between vigorous proponents of self psychology, equally energetic critics, and many participants between these polar positions. This book attempts to capture within its pages not only the content of what was presented, explored, and evaluated in Boston, but also a (...) sense of the people, about 1,000 strong, who exchanged their ideas on and off the podium – and the remarkable spirit of open inquiry that invigorated these proceedings. The book, as was the meeting, is organized to explore four subjects: the development of the self: infant research; the implications of self psychology for psychoanalytic practice; self psychology and psychotherapy; and the implications of self psychology for psychoanalytic theory. The final section of the book is devoted to an essay by Heinz Kohut that provides an integrated response to the issues and criticisms raised in the course of the symposium. This essay while based on extemporaneous responses by Kohut during different phases of the meeting, is, in its written version, a cohesive, carefully revised, and edited statement prepared in the mellowing period following the meeting and before Kohut’s untimely death. (shrink)

Originally published in 1983 _Reflections on Self Psychology_ records the development of a powerful initiative to alter psychoanalytic theory and practice, and an evaluative questioning of this initiative. It presents a dialogue that developed at the Boston Symposium of 1980 between vigorous proponents of self psychology, equally energetic critics, and many participants between these polar positions. This book attempts to capture within its pages not only the content of what was presented, explored, and evaluated in Boston, but also a (...) sense of the people, about 1,000 strong, who exchanged their ideas on and off the podium – and the remarkable spirit of open inquiry that invigorated these proceedings. The book, as was the meeting, is organized to explore four subjects: the development of the self: infant research; the implications of self psychology for psychoanalytic practice; self psychology and psychotherapy; and the implications of self psychology for psychoanalytic theory. The final section of the book is devoted to an essay by Heinz Kohut that provides an integrated response to the issues and criticisms raised in the course of the symposium. This essay while based on extemporaneous responses by Kohut during different phases of the meeting, is, in its written version, a cohesive, carefully revised, and edited statement prepared in the mellowing period following the meeting and before Kohut’s untimely death. (shrink)

The concept of mental disease has broadened considerably in the last few years. Many mental states that were not previously considered problematic now fall under the category of disease. The most notable example is anxiety. Anxiety disorders are the most prevalently treated mental disease. The current social and psychiatric authorities emphasize the negativity of the affective state and recommend methods by which the state can be avoided. The problem with these approaches is that they do not recognize the functional role (...) of anxiety in the life of the individual. Anxiety is a stimulus for growth and individuation, but this growth can only occur when the anxiety-provoking situation is altered for the better. The theories of Søren Kierkegaard, Ernest Schachtel, and Kurt Goldstein will be called upon to support the theory that anxiety is inherent in personal growth. It is ultimately argued that eliminating anxiety creates static individuals in a static society and is harmful to both individual and social progress. (shrink)

Drawing on theories of institutional evolution, this article contends that despite the centrality of occupationally based social insurance in postwar Korea and Taiwan, the welfare state has in fact deepened considerably. The analysis is structured around three distinct eras of social policy reform in Korea and Taiwan: the developmental state, democratic transition, and postindustrialism. The authors contend that during each of these eras, the institutional purposes of social policy were altered to meet certain socioeconomic objectives. New institutional purposes were grafted (...) onto the prevailing social insurance model, changing the outcomes of social policy. The developmental state era was productivist in purpose, democratic reform during the 1980s reoriented social insurance toward universalist and redistributive principles, and the post-1997 era refocused social insurance to meet the imperatives of flexible labor markets, demographic shifts, and economic globalization. (shrink)

Amid the ongoing debate over the proper interpretation of Aristotle's theory of sense perception in the "De Anima," Steven Everson has recently presented a well-documented and ambitious treatment of the issue, arguing in favor of Richard Sorabji's controversial position that sense organs literally take on the qualities of their proper objects. Against the interpretation of M. F. Burnyeat, Everson and others make a compelling case the Aristotelian account of sensation requires some physical process to occur in sense organs. A detailed (...) examination of the interpretation by Everson and Sorabji of Aristotle's theory, however, shows that their reading cannot be the correct one, since it involves many textual and philosophical difficulties. Their interpretation, for instance, would require abandoning Aristotle's requirement that only a transparent substance is suitable matter for an eye. Likewise, their understanding of the Aristotle's doctrine of sensation as the reception of form without matter in "DA 2.12" cannot be reconciled with other texts of his from "On Generation and Corruption." An analysis of these texts, as well as "DA 2.7" and "De Sensu 6" on the roles of light and the transparent medium in vision, show that, for Aristotle, the physical processes which sense organs undergo are not standard qualitative changes (i.e. alterations), but activities or the actualizations of potencies in the material constituents of living animal bodies. (shrink)

Science uses its firmest conclusions to arrive at new ones which may well completely destroy these, previously firmest, conclusions. The perceptive may notice that when the previously firmest conclusions are demolished we may remain in the dark with no conclusion worth replacing it with. But only when we replace it with a firmer conclusion can we speak of a bootstrap operation rather than of a refutations. Often, to conclude, the ad hoc nature of a fact-like statement is rooted in the (...) theoretical background against which it is couched; given a different theoretical background and it fully falls into place, as the expression goes. If an observation report is at once a corollary of our scientific theory, then it is unproblematic. If it conflicts with our scientific theory, either we reject the theory or try to find an excuse for not rejecting it. When, however, a small theory which well integrates in our theoretical background is attacked by a well corroborated fact-like theory and all its defences are refuted, then a revolution may be under way. Such events may be rare, but they are the more interesting ones. At times we alter our whole theoretical outlook around a rather fact-like theory which then gets refuted. We then look silly from any viewpoint except that which takes the process to be a bootstrap operation! (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:92 A NOTE ON SMITH'S TERM "NATURALISM" The reader of contemporary Hume literature may feel exasperated when reading recent authors. A conspicuous example is A.J. Ayer (Hume, 1982; see index, Art, Natural beliefs), who declares they endorse Kemp Smith's view of Hume's "naturalism" without sufficiently clarifying what they — or Smith — might exactly mean by this term. Charles W. Hendel, in the 1963 edition of his 1924 Studies (...) in the Philosophy of David Hume, adds eight pages of a new preface and thirty-one pages of a review of Hume scholarship between 1925 and 1962, and he speaks at great length there of his life-long friendship and cooperation with Norman Kemp Smith and appreciation of his work. He says (p. xlviii), "There is a disposition today to assimilate Hume's thought to naturalism as understood in the contemporary sense." He does not say what this "contemporary sense" is, and the statement just quoted seems to have served as the seal of approval and the legitimation of this questionable practice. Hendel's new, 1963, material mentions Smith's discussion of Hume's "naturalism" — but refers only to Smith's early work, "The Naturalism of Hume," Mind, 14, 1905, 149-173 and 335-347, not to Smith's famous The Philosophy of David Hume of 1941, even though he deems that work "of great consequence for Hume scholarship" (p. xxxviii) and a "masterwork" (p. xxxix). The early work (1905) of Smith is already mentioned by Hendel in the body of the 1924 work (p. 361), although there, clearly, the word "naturalism," whatever its meaning is, and however contemporary then, is not necessarily the "contemporary sense" of 1962. The work which clearly (if implicitly) distinguishes between the traditional sense and Smith's 1905 sense of "naturalism" is John Laird's Hume's 93 Philosophy of Human Nature, 1932, 1967. We find there a discussion of Hume's naturalism (beginning of Chapter II), as well as of Hume's "Naturalism" (Chapter VI, fifth and fourth paragraphs from the end), with reference to Smith's 1905 work. Now, the traditional sense of "naturalism" is straightforward and seems to have been instituted by Pierre Bayle to designate the view of the world as devoid of all supernatural intervention, the view of the world as "disenchanted," to use the equivalent term accredited to Max Weber. Clearly, all Epicureans and neoEpicureans, Hume included, were naturalists in this sense. This is not the sense in which Smith uses it in his 1905 essay, "The Naturalism of Hume." The first part of this essay opposes T. H. Green's traditional reading of Hume as a philosopher who streamlined the ideas of Locke and Berkeley and proposes to replace it with the view of Hume's view as "naturalism." "Hume's... naturalistic view of reason," we are told (p. 158), "is a new theory of belief": Humean belief, on Smith's new reading, "is not caused by knowledge but precedes it, and as it is not caused by knowledge it is not destroyed by doubt" (p. 165). Smith declared his reading quite revolutionary, yet it may be endorsed without rejecting Green's reading. Smith does not even attempt to re-interpret in detail the passages which prima facie conform to Green's reading. The second part of his essay is the application of his revolutionary reading to psychology and to ethics. Smith devotes the preface of his The Philosophy of David Hume (1941) to a revision of his 1905 study. It seems he did not alter his attitude towards the first part but only to the second: he thought the starting point of Hume's study was his concern not for "naturalism" but for "moral philosophy, or the science of human nature" (opening words of Hume's Inquiry, cf. Hendel, op. cit., p. xlvi). This statement has to do 94 with emphasis, not with the meanings of terms or with ascriptions of views (and it is erroneous, or at least limited; but this is another matter). This is not to deny that Hume was a naturalist in Bayle's sense, as everyone today agrees. Most philosophers today share this naturalism with Hume. "His attitude and way of... (shrink)

This paper describes one possible origin point for fraudulent behavior within the American pharmaceutical industry. We argue that during the late nineteenth century therapeutic reformers sought to promote both laboratory science and increasingly systematized forms of clinical experiment as a new basis for therapeutic knowledge. This process was intertwined with a transformation in the ethical framework in which medical science took place, one in which monopoly status was replaced by clinical utility as the primary arbiter of pharmaceutical legitimacy. This new (...) framework fundamentally altered the set of epistemic virtues—a phrase we draw from the philosophical field of virtue epistemology—considered necessary to conduct reliable scientific inquiry regarding drugs. In doing so, it also made possible new forms of fraud in which newly emergent epistemic virtues were violated. To make this argument, we focus on the efforts of Francis E. Stewart and George S. Davis of Parke, Davis & Company. Therapeutic reformers within the pharmaceutical industry, such as Stewart and Davis, were an important part of the broader normative and epistemic transformation we describe in that they sought to promote laboratory science and systematized clinical trials toward the twin goals of improving pharmaceutical science and promoting their own commercial interests. Yet, as we suggest, Parke, Davis & Company also serves as an example of a company that violated the very norms that Stewart and Davis helped introduce. We thus seek to describe one possible origin point for the widespread fraudulent practices that now characterize the pharmaceutical industry. We also seek to describe an origin point for why we conceptualize such practices as fraudulent in the first place. (shrink)

In God of Empowering Love: A History and Reconception of the Theodicy Conundrum, David Polk proposes that the power of God should be understood as love that empowers rather than overpowers and that the process-relational metaphysics of Whitehead, Hartshorne, and subsequent Whiteheadian thinkers justifies this conception of God’s power as empowering love. I argue instead that, while Polk’s thesis cannot, strictly speaking, be philosophically justified within the conventional parameters of Whitehead’s metaphysical scheme, the latter could be modestly altered so as (...) to justify divine power as empowering love. In what follows, I lay out my argument for a systems-oriented approach to the God-world relationship in which God as Trinity is both the transcendent origin and ultimate goal of the cosmic process. (shrink)

The concentration of low‐density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (C) in plasma is a key determinant of cardiovascular disease risk and human genetic studies have long endeavoured to elucidate the pathways that regulate LDL metabolism. Massive genome‐wide association studies (GWASs) of common genetic variation associated with LDL‐C in the population have implicated SORT1 in LDL metabolism. Using experimental paradigms and standards appropriate for understanding the mechanisms by which common variants alter phenotypic expression, three recent publications have presented divergent and even contradictory (...) findings. Interestingly, although these reports each linked SORT1 to LDL metabolism, they did not agree on a mechanism to explain the association. Here, we review recent mechanistic studies of SORT1 – the first gene identified by GWAS as a determinant of plasma LDL‐C to be evaluated mechanistically. (shrink)

BackgroundBioethics and law distinguish between the practices of "physician-assisted death" and "allowing the patient to die."DiscussionAdvances in biotechnology have allowed medical devices to be used as destination therapy that are designed for the permanent support of cardiac function and/or respiration after irreversible loss of these spontaneous vital functions. For permanent support of cardiac function, single ventricle or biventricular mechanical assist devices and total artificial hearts are implanted in the body. Mechanical ventilators extrinsic to the body are used for permanent support (...) of respiration. Clinical studies have shown that destination therapy with ventricular assist devices improves patient survival compared to medical management, but at the cost of a substantial alteration in end-of-life trajectories. The moral and legal assessment of the appropriateness and permissibility of complying with a patient's request to electively discontinue destination therapy in a life-terminating act in non-futile situations has generated controversy. Some argue that complying with this request is ethically justified because patients have the right to request withdrawal of unwanted treatment and be allowed to die of preexisting disease. Other commentators reject the argument that acceding to an elective request for death by discontinuing destination therapy is 'allowing a patient to die' because of serious flaws in interpreting the intention, causation, and moral responsibility of the ensuing death.SummaryDestination therapy with cardiac and/or ventilatory medical devices replaces native physiological functions and successfully treats a preexisting disease. We posit that discontinuing cardiac and/or ventilatory support at the request of a patient or surrogate can be viewed as allowing the patient to die if--and only if--concurrent lethal pathophysiological conditions are present that are unrelated to those functions already supported by medical devices in destination therapy. In all other cases, compliance with a patient's request constitutes physician-assisted death because of the pathophysiology induced by the turning off of these medical devices, as well as the intention, causation, and moral responsibility of the ensuing death. The distinction between allowing the patient to die and physician-assisted death is pivotal to the moral and legal status of elective requests for death by discontinuing destination cardiac and/or ventilatory medical devices in patients who are not imminently dying. This distinction also represents essential information that must be disclosed to patients and surrogates in advance of consent to this type of therapy. (shrink)

Technology can be based on aesthetic sensibility rather than becoming just one more aggressive assault on nature. Resources for such an alteration of cultural consciousness can be found within the Daoist understanding of nature as unceasing birth, death, and rebirth. The articulation of such a perspective can use the tools developed within the tradition of American Naturalism. Dewey and Peirce, in particular, offer ways of establishing a community of inquiry based on such a sensibility.

In attempting to achieve some form of mapping between consciousness and cognition, I distinguish between a weak and a strong version of the hypothesis, indicating a change in mode of thinking of a metaphoric-symbolic nature . The weak version would claim that metaphors, symbols, analogies and images are used in an attempt to depict the experience, which is not easily translatable into words. The strong version would claim that metaphoric thinking is one of the hallmarks of the experience, and is (...) used both in an attempt to depict the experience and also to convey to the reader, and possibly to induce in the reader, some of the qualities of that experience. My discussion of these two options is preceded by some comments on problems inherent in studying altered or alternate states of consciousness. I also discuss the relationships among physiognomic perception, cognitive dedifferentiation, and symbolic cognition. (shrink)

What R&P term the implies that the psi-conducive state is related to the induction of an altered state of consciousness (ASC). Yet there is a problem in embedding psi in the ASC, because one anomaly is replacing another. This seems to be a general strategy in the literature of the anomalous.

ABSTRACT The period of government‐sponsored research and development, involving military and industrial intervention in academic life, especially in the USA, was brief and yet its characteristics were declared universal by two historians of science there, Derek J. de Solla Price and Thomas S. Kuhn, who justified coercion and boredom in research work organized hierarchically. The reform of work movement is now attempting to introduce ideas in the opposite direction. Clearly, the institutions of big science should be interested in the improvement (...) of the quality of research done on their premises and in the changes in world situation which might greatly change the agenda of research. To that end research into the general character of big science is very advisable and may be instigated either by large research institutions or by some of their umbrella organizations which may create incentives and alter the character of big science radically to everybody's advantage. (shrink)

The human “environment of evolutionary adaptedness” can only be inferred indirectly. In contrast, the behavior of some nonhuman animals can be compared among “natural” and various altered environments. As an example, male immigration tactics in unprovisioned versus provisioned macaque (Macaca) populations are compared using Tooby and Cosmides’s (1992) framework for evolutionary functional analysis. In unprovisioned populations, social groups contain few males, and immigrant male takeovers of alpha rank occur frequently. In provisioned populations, groups contain many males, and males almost invariably (...) enter social groups at very low rank and rise in rank only as more dominant males emigrate or die. Male conformity to the “seniority rule” is hypothesized to represent the behavioral output of an evolved decision-making algorithm (psychological mechanism) that takes into account (1) the net payoff of each rank in the dominance hierarchy and (2) the power of male group size as a predictor of the likelihood of successful immigrant takeover. (shrink)

Similarity is a philosophically much-maligned concept. Bertrand Russell claimed that its ineliminability forces on us the admission of at least one universal, thereby undermining nominalism. But even if things must be supposed to be similar if our language functions publicly by way of using finitely many terms repeatedly for purposes of designation, reference, and predication, Russell’s insistence has as such no bearing at all on the epistemological questions of sorting the actual similarities among things and of fixing the grounds on (...) which we may be sure that they are what they are alleged to be. It need not even affect nominalism. Speculation about universals oscillates between the metaphysical and the epistemological. No one doubts that things must be similar in some respect if natural languages behave as they do. But the concession is thought to be a vacuous one precisely because the respect required need never be specified in that admission. On the other hand, it is characteristically said to be epistemologically superfluous because to say that a set of things are similar in respect R is just to say that they are R’s, and to know that—so the argument goes—is to out-flank the original need to inquire whether they are merely similar, thereby restoring the viability of nominalism. This, briefly, is Nelson Goodman’s strategy laid out compellingly in The Structure of Appearance and collected, with explicitly greater scope as far as his own work is concerned but not essentially altered, in a comparatively recent paper. Of course, the legitimacy of terming a set of things R’s, predicatively, invites us to consider whether, on some theory, things really are such. This, the problem of realism, signifies that however vacuous the admission of similarity may be, the putative finding that a set of things are R’s threatens to be epistemically arbitrary unless we have a reasonable theory regarding the validity of so construing them. On Goodman’s account, realism concerns a system’s admitting or not admitting “non-particulars as individuals”—which is to say, Goodman views the issue neutrally as between platonism and nominalism. On that view, “an individual is particular if and only if it is exhaustively divisible into unrepeatable complexes; while an individual is universal if and only if it contains no unrepeatable complex.” The denial of platonism is the denial that there are nonindividuals, not nonparticulars. Alternatively put, “universality is … a matter of multiplicity of instances.” And “repeatability” occurs if a complex “occurs with some two individuals of one category. A color, for example, is repeated if it occurs at two places, even at the same time; and a time is repeated if two qualia of some one kind occur at that time.” Qualia, then, colors for instance, are complexes. (shrink)

Society is broken. We can design our way to a better one. In our increasingly interconnected world, self-interest and social-interest are rapidly becoming indistinguishable. If the oceans die, if society fractures, or if global warming spirals out of control, personal success becomes meaningless. But our broken system incentivizes behavior that only makes these problems worse. If true human rights progress is to be achieved today, it is time we dig deeper-rethinking the very foundation of our social system. In this engaging, (...) important work, Peter Joseph, founder of the world's largest grassroots social movement in the world-The Zeitgeist Movement-draws from economics, history, philosophy, and modern public-health research to present a bold case for rethinking activism in the 21st century. The conventional wisdom views poverty, social oppression, and the growing loss of public health as unfortunate and immutable side effects of our way of life. The New Human Rights Movement argues that these outcomes are, in fact, contrived-only natural to our outdated economic system. Social activists can never succeed in dramatically improving human life on this planet until they understand the structural reasons these problems exist. Arguing against the long-standing narrative of universal scarcity and other pervasive, legitimizing myths that defend the current state of affairs, The New Human Rights Movement ultimately presents the case for an updated economic approach. Joseph explores the potential of this grand social shift and how we can design our way to a post-scarcity world-a world where poverty doesn't exist and the human family has become truly sustainable. The New Human Rights Movement reveals the critical importance of a unified activism in this direction, through understanding and working to alter the inherent injustice of our current social system. This book not only warns against what is in store if we continue to ignore our broken society but also reveals the positive future possible if we succeed. Will you join the movement? (shrink)