Bhakti marga is one of the three important paths of attaining spiritual advancement. The concept is as old as Vedas, developed and elaborated periodically and gradually. In the medieval India ‘Bhakti’ was spread all over the country through Sant Kabir. This paper aims at describing the concept of Bhakti according to Sant Kabir. The essence of Bhakti is love; the best and appropriate method to unite man with God. It is very subtle in nature. Inculcating love in one’s own heart (...) is a challenging task. Bhakti marga is not a velvet path, though it sounds so sweet. It’s a heroic path. One needs to be desperate enough to follow this path. A passive, timid and lazy person can never attain the great gift of love. In the great adventure of uniting the soul with God, mind plays the role of villain, creating obstacles at every step. Man must be skillful enough in removing those obstacles. Keeping the constant company of true people helps man to strengthen his vision and aim. The need of the Guru (spiritual adept) is insisted in this great endeavour. But, one must be careful enough in choosing a real Guru. Love towards God cultivates love towards fellow beings, which is very much needed in this unfriendly, in secured and ruthless world. It is in the hands of man to choose either to follow the path of love or the world of war. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to re-assess Karl Barth's use of the Kierkegaardian “infinite qualitative distinction between God and man”. It juxtaposes Kierkegaard's qualitative dialectic and Karl Barth's own complementary dialectic respectively. Then it compares and contrasts their similarities and dissimilarities in various contexts that would lead us to a more balanced assessment of Barth's use of Kierkegaardian diastasis and a better understanding of the ultimate purpose for holding fast to the bipolar but relational God-man unity of the Incarnation. (...) In contrast to Hegelian synthesis, the article contends that the dynamics of the dialectics of Kierkegaard and Barth should be understood in the manner of a complementary synthesis of two opposites. (shrink)

The first part of the article demonstrates how the concept of mental resilience has developed from the 1970s to the 2010s, spreading from the field of developmental psychopathology to a wide range of psychological and psychotherapeutic disciplines. Today, there are many varied definitions of mental resilience, ranging from a relation to the concept of mental vulnerability to a related concept of mental strength. The second part of the article demonstrates how the current popularisation of the idea of individual resilience is (...) associated with a social and cultural problematisation of the vulnerable life as well as with a psychopolitical and governmental focus on enhancing the mental capacity of citizens. (shrink)

The first part of the article demonstrates how the concept of mental resilience has developed from the 1970s to the 2010s, spreading from the field of developmental psychopathology to a wide range of psychological and psychotherapeutic disciplines. Today, there are many varied definitions of mental resilience, ranging from a relation to the concept of mental vulnerability to a related concept of mental strength. The second part of the article demonstrates how the current popularisation of the idea of individual resilience is (...) associated with a social and cultural problematisation of the vulnerable life as well as with a psychopolitical and governmental focus on enhancing the mental capacity of citizens. (shrink)

This article reviews three basic ways in which the relationship between Abrahamic religion and science has been construed: as fundamentally antagonistic; as non‐antagonistically incommensurable; and as complementary. Unfortunately, while each construal seems to offer benefits to the religious believer, none, as the article demonstrates, is without considerable cost.

This article focuses mainly on (1) the policy of Delft University of Technology since 1992 as regards the university-wide introduction of a compulsory course on ethics and engineering, and (2) the ideal structure of such a course, including the educational goals of the course.

Analytic study of the Advaita philosophy of Śaṅkarācārya and its schools.

Biography of Ibn Rushd... Averroes, old heathen, If only you had been right, if Intellect Itself were absolute law, sufficient grace. Our lives could be a myth of captivity. Which we might enter: an unpeopled region.

The present article aims to explain Kamala??la’s understanding of the nature of insight, specifically considering it as the ‘discernment of reality’ -- a technical term identified with insight in the author’s well known Bh?van?krama? texts. I approach my analysis of bh?ta-pratyavek?? from three different angles. I begin by providing a rationale for its translation. This is followed by an account of Kamala??la’s reading of key passages in the La?k?vat?ra S?tra describing the process to which the term refers. Here the aim (...) is to illustrate Kamala??la’s understanding of bh?ta-pratyavek?? as it is actually experienced in meditation. The final section examines bh?ta-pratyavek?? in relation to other important technical terminology employed in the course of making arguments against his historical rival in debate, the Ch’an monk Mo ho yen. By providing these three different perspectives on the same process it is my hope that both scholars and practitioners will be able to more fully comprehend and benefit from the instructions provided by the ancient master Kamala??la. (shrink)

The paper concentrates on an appreciation of W.V. Quine’s thought on meaning and how it escalates beyond the meaning holism and confirmation holism, thereby paving the way for a ‘meaning nihilism’ and ‘confirmation rejectionism’. My effort would be to see that how could the acceptance of radical naturalism in Quine’s theory of meaning escorts him to the indeterminacy thesis of meaning. There is an interesting shift from epistemology to language as Quine considers that a person who is aware of linguistic (...) trick can be the master of referential language. Another important question is that how could Quine’s radical translation thesis reduce into semantic indeterminacy that is a consequence of his confirmation methord. Even I think that the notion and the analysis of meaning became hopelessly vague in Quine’s later work. I further argue on Quine’s position of meaning that I call, following Hilary Putnam, ‘meaning nihilism’. It seems to me that Quine had no belief like ‘meaning consists in’, or ‘meaning depends on’ something. Through this argument, I would like to challenge the confirmation holism that was foisted by Fodor on Quine’s thesis. My attempt would be to scrutinize Putnam’s point of view that Quine was neither a confirmation holist nor a meaning holist. I think that both Putnam and Quine denied the concept of constitutive connection of meaning as a second grade notion not only from the realm of semantic, but also from the perspective of epistemology. So, linguistic meaning cannot be formed by any sample of its uses. For Quine, the concept of meaning in metaphysics is heuristic and need not be taken seriously in any ‘science worthy’ literature. (shrink)

Sterelny’s Thought in a Hostile World ([ 2003 ]) presents a complex, systematically structured theory of the evolution of cognition centered on a concept of decoupled representation. Taking Godfrey-Smith’s ([ 1996 ]) analysis of the evolution of behavioral flexibility as a framework, the theory describes increasingly complex grades of representation beginning with simple detection and culminating with decoupled representation, said to be belief-like, and it characterizes selection forces that drive evolutionary transformations in these forms of representation. Sterelny’s ultimate explanatory target (...) is the evolution of human agency. This paper develops a detailed analysis of the main cognitive aspects. It is argued that some of the major claims are not correct: decoupled representation as defined doesn’t capture belief-like representation, and, properly understood, decoupled representation turns out to be ubiquitous among multicellular animals. However, some of the key ideas are right, or along the right lines, and suggestions are made for modifying and expanding the conceptual framework. (shrink)

Soul and it's functional mechanism in jainism Elucidation by school kind kund.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:NEWMAN'S PSYCHOLOGICAL DISCOVERY: THE ILLATIVE SENSE (V. Continued) 15. The Universals. A long and vehement dispute once raged about the reality of universals. Are they only mental creations, forged by the human brain, without any reality outside them, or have they some independent existence apart from their mental reality? Anyhow, there was an apparent contradiction between die universal character of our ideas and the individual character of concrete things. (...) The Scholastics solved this problem by drawing clear distinctions. An idea is an abstraction; as soon as it becomes applicable to a number of objects or things in the same sense, it is a universal idea. The "direct universal" (universale directum seu metaphysicum) as such has no existence apart from our minds, because an existing thing is always bound up with concrete, determining, individualizing notes, and it is these very circumstances or accidents which are ignored by the mind as it strips the thing of its individual characteristics. When the mind reflects on this "direct universal," i.e., on the abstract essence of the thing, it sees that this is to be found in many more things and that it is identical in all those things, and in this way the "reflex or logical universal" is formed (universale reflexum seu logicum). This same essence or quiddity is not really different from the thing itself, but the mind makes abstraction of all accidents, and this foundation makes it possible to apply this idea in die same sense to all other beings of the same kind, whether they are actually existing or not. In other words the universal as a universal has only reality in the mind but it has a foundation or a ground in the thing itself. Newman was not so well acquainted with Scholasticism that he knew and mastered the solution of the problem. As a matter of fact he approached it from quite another angle. Hence when scholastically trained minds read some of his statements on universals, they may feel shocked. They sound very curious, they seem incon418 DR. ZENO, O.F.M. CAP.419 sistent with each other, they apparenüy imply a negation of the objective reality of universals. This makes it necessary to compare the texts and to explain his meaning. a. Newman Inconsistent. We should never lose sight of the fact that Newman had no intention at all to enter the province of philosophy in the restricted sense of the word. "I am only contemplating the mind as it moves in fact, by whatever hidden mechanism,"1 that is what could be put as a heading to every page of the Grammar of Assent. And when he virtually deals with metaphysics, he wants us to consider his statements as hypotheses, or as propositions stated only by the way, and in this department he always wishes "to speak under correction." This explains how he could refer to the universale metaphy sicum and the universale directum in a very correct way without realizing he was teaching Scholastic doctrine. As far as I know, it is Professor Walgrave who has first drawn attention to this fact,2 when he dealt with Newman's alleged conceptualism. Newman states that "even one act of cruelty, ingratitude, generosity or justice reveals to us at once intensive the immutable distinction between those qualities and their contraries; that is, in that particular instance and pro bac vice."3 The same holds for the opposites: right and wrong, true and false, just and unjust, beautiful and deformed.4 In one experience, therefore, he sees a thing as an immutable, absolute quiddity, which objectively and in the same sense belongs to all possible things of the same kind, although the mind does not yet explicidy confirm this universal applicability. The contemplated quality remains limited to the particular case; but in its absoluteness it is stripped of all individual, changeable and concrete characteristics. This is the metaphysical universal of the Scholastics. But Newman also mentions the logical universal when he says: "As we form our notion of whiteness from the actual sight of snow, a lily or a cloud, so, after experiencing the sentiment of approbation which arises in us on the sight of certain... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:NEWMAN'S PSYCHOLOGICAL DISCOVERY: THE ILLATIVE SENSE (Continued) VI THE FACULTIES OF COGNITION AND APPETITION Since the Grammar of Assent gives us a phenorhenological analysis of the art of thinking and often refers to the influence of other faculties in our reasoning processes, it will be very instructive to examine what the author holds about our faculties of cognition and appetition. This will make us better acquainted with the nature (...) of the illative sense. I. THE SENSES 1. The External Senses and their Objects. We had already arrived at the conclusion that Newman rejects the mere subjectivity of our knowledge. When he writes about this matter he explicitly deals with sensation or sensuous cognition. Although he takes exception to the word "immediate perception," 1 we may nevertheless call him an adherent of direct or immediate realism according to Scholastic terminology, because he emphatically excludes the intervention of a reasoning process from sense perception and uses the term "mediate perception" only to express the instrumentality of experience. In this meaning our perception of external objects is mediate or indirect indeed.2 The fact is that as early as 1839 he wrote in his University Sermons: "Of the material we have direct knowledge through the senses"3 and in 1843: "The senses are direct, immediate, and ordinary informants, and act spontaneously without any will or effort on our part."4 On the importance of sense perception for our mental activities he writes in a series of hitherto unpublished notes, entitled Elements of Thought:6 "I grant or I assume that the soul would not think without some external stimulus; that if it were cut off from all communication from the external world, it would pass this life in a sort of torpor... But then, as soon as it is roused, it reflects upon itself, and thereby gains a number of ideas..." 1. See supra V, 14.2. Supra V, 14.3. P. 205. 4.P. 303 ; cf. Gramm., p. 260. 5.See the unpublished Philosophical Papers, note Fcbr. 24, 1859. 40 DR. ZENO, OJM. CAP.41 Apart from the passages already referred to, Newman nowhere enlarges on the doctrine about the senses. He does not speak about the distinctions between sensible objects; he does not explain the difference between sensation and perception, and uses those terms promiscuously.6 There are no statements on the subject which contradict current Scholastic notions, although sometimes his vague terminology may be an occasion for misunderstandings. For instance, some passages in connection with "images" and "impressions," when read apart from the context, would appear to imply that he identifies them with the Scholastic species a sensibili accepta. However, we shall show further on that. Newman means something quite different. He deals with these species and the so-called sensibilia per acci· dens by the way when describing our knowledge of God7 and teaching that we have evidence of the presence of individuals or substances in the phenomena which occur to our senses. We picture those things to ourselves in those phenomena. They are like pictures, he says, but at the same time "they give us no exact measure or character of the unknown things beyond them." "Therefore when we speak of our having a picture of the things which are perceived through the senses, we mean a certain representation, true as far as it goes, but not adequate." 2. The Internal Senses and their Objects. Newman nowhere gives a distinction between external and internal senses, but nevertheless he speaks about those faculties of the mind which by the Scholastics are called the internal senses. These philosophers distinguish a common sense or rather a central sense (sensus communis), which unites the impressions of the external senses into one whole, makes us conscious of the conditions of our body and notifies to us the sensations of our external as well as internal senses; — the imagination or the faculty which preserves and reproduces things perceived; — the sensuous memory, i. e., the power to retain and to reproduce sense images; — and the vis aestimativa or the instinctive faculty, which discovers without any intellectual means, what is good and what is bad for our welfare. 6.It would seem that he generally... (shrink)

Through case studies that highlight the type of information that is seldom reported in the news, Faces of Environmental Racism exposes the type and magnitude of environmental racism, both domestic and international. The essays explore the justice of current environmental practices, asking such questions as whether cost-benefit analysis is an appropriate analytic technique and whether there are alternate routes to sustainable development in the South.

The book will be an indispensable resource for anyone interested in contemporary philosophy and the social sciences.

This book brings together scholars from a variety of epistemological perspectives to explore the multiple ways in which sexuality does indeed matter in the arena of public education.

The contemporary debate centering round the circumference of feminist discourse has of late been very potent in addressing the issues of certain prejudiced notions in our existing patriarchal structure. This paper is an attempt to show the ongoing paradox existing in the world of feminism which has thoroughly critiqued the patriarchal culture and has naturalized sexual identities, thereby glorifying man’s supremacy and dominion. The patriarchal culture lionized the ideals of brevity, courageousness, and intellect and thought of these as the only (...) special possessions of man in society. The qualities of being submissive, kind and caring in nature is considered to be “ideal” and exclusive qualities of a woman. Even though these qualities are “ideal” to women, they are discarded from being considered as universal in nature and are thought of as insignificant in the mainstream societal structure. These qualities are treated as inferior, and exclusively womanly and hence cannot make their stand in the conventional patriarchal social order. For this reason a dilemmatic situation arises here. My effort is to show that this dilemma cannot be exposed in the sense of gender specific human qualities. (shrink)

How an abstract immaterial being is connected to a physical thing has been viewed variously by western philosophers who considered the issue prior to their Muslim counterparts.Muslim theologians and philosophers, however, developed the related discussions which became heated following the translation of logical books and essays throughout the Translation Era.The focus of this article, besides clarifying the ideas raised by Muslim philosophers in this regard,is to shed light on Mulla Sadra's opinion and its influence on the later philosophers, Abd-ul-Razzaq Lahiji (...) in particular.To explain his opinion,Mulla Sadra primarily brings a proof to establish the unity of the soul,and to prove this,he has refuted the reasons used by the opposing philosophers through negation and affirmation.Using negation,he comments on why there can't be a unity of soul, and then refers to his opponent's inability to distinguish between specific unity and generic unity considering the latter equal to vegetable,animal and human spirits.Soul and body,Mulla Sadra reiterates,are attached to each other in two ways; in one way,soul is attached to body and yet it is contingent on itself and not on the person's being; in the other way,soul is attached to body while the person's potentialities are actualized; this second type of attachment relates to obtaining existential virtues.It must be noted that Mulla Sadra's belief in these two types of attachment results from his belief in the trans-substantial motion in which soul is also involved.Mulla Sadra works out a solution to the question of relation between soul and body and their effects on one another by proposing the mediation of a veiled spirit, since the soul which belongs to a world of pure light does not involve itself directly in the affairs of the dark body. The veiled spirit is as subtle as the non-material soul and as corporeal as it needs in connectionwith body.This view has been argued by Allameh Tabatabii who thinks corporeal qualities and ontological status must be kept separated and not be mixed.Lahiji,on the other hand, seems to have accepted Mulla Sadra's idea looking at it as a philosophical question,not a medical case. He,like Mulla Sadra, while considering unity for soul, thinks of it as having properties such as sensation imagination estimation intellection. According to Lahiji,the unity of soul and body is like the unity of matter and form; however,unlike natural forms,it does not subsist in matter and interestingly,this notion resembles Neo-Platonist views. (shrink)

Conditional promises and threats are speech acts that are used to manipulate other people's behaviour. Studies on human reasoning typically use propositional logic to analyse what people infer from such inducements. While this approach is sufficient to uncover conceptual features of inducements, it fails to explain them. To overcome this limitation, we propose a multilevel analysis integrating motivational, linguistic, deontic, behavioural, and emotional aspects. Commonalities and differences between conditional promises and threats on various levels were examined in two experiments. The (...) first shows that both types of inducements are understood as being complementary on the linguistic level, but not reversible, due to the specific temporal order of their actions. In addition, it gives a first assessment of emotional reactions. The second experiment investigated the novel question of whether complementary promises and threats, despite semantic differences, both imply an obligation to cooperate on the deontic level. The data corroborate this hypothesis, and they support various appraisal-theoretical assumptions on the elicitation of emotions. They also reveal that content affects not only the attribution of emotions, but also the deontic interpretation. (shrink)

Der Selbstbestimmungdes Patienten kommt in der modernen Debatte über das Gesundheitswesen eine zentrale Bedeutung zu. Selbstbestimmung ist aber ein voraussetzungsvoller Begriff, der für Patientengruppen wie Demenzbetroffene, deren Entscheidungs- und Einwilligungsfähigkeit nachlässt oder nicht mehr gegeben ist, eine Reihe von Fragen aufwirft. Auf der Grundlage der jeweiligen Symptomentwicklung der Demenzerkrankung und eigener Erfahrungen im Umgang mit Demenzbetroffenen wirdde rEntwicklungdes Willens in den verschiedenen Stadien der Demenz nachgegangen. Dabei wird den Dimensionen der Differenziertheit der Denkinhalte, der Beurteilungsbasis und der Entscheidungskonstanz eine besondere (...) Bedeutung zugemessen und für eine Graduierung der Selbstbestimmungsmöglichkeiten im Umgang mit Demenzbetroffenen plädiert. Wegen der Schwererkennbarkeit der oft verschlüsselten Willensbekundungen Demenzbetroffener wird der Willenswahrnehmung und dem Training der genauen Beobachtung, Einfühlung und Sensibilität im Umgang mit den Betroffenen großes Gewicht beigemessen. Als Ziel wird die jeweils weitestgehende Selbstbestimmung, im Verlaufe der Erkrankung auch Teilselbstbestimmung und schließlich Mitwirkung bei der individuellen Wohlbestimmung im Sinne eines Grundrechtsschutzes vertreten. (shrink)

This article aims to listen, read and move with the South African musician Abdullah Ibrahim by focusing on various works in his corpus that see him weave together a sonic aesthetic and identify sound, space and time as fundamentally intertwined with and constituted by the experiences of racial violence and anti-blackness in a modern colonial world. Part of our critical pursuit is to highlight Abdullah Ibrahim as a theorist of black geography invested in the everyday sounds ringing through the ghettoes, (...) townships and reserves created as debased and inexhaustible reservoirs for cheap labour by colonial-apartheid regimes. We will also examine how some of Abdullah Ibrahim's music interrogates the status of the black subject through the modalities of a black Islamic sonic aesthetic. This is one of the factors which qualifies it as a layered site of mythical and experimental histories and enables us to identify his body of work as deeply connected with the articulations of loss, suffering, the cadence of change, and hope. (shrink)

The present article concentrates on understanding the limits of language from the realm of meaning theory as portrayed by Wittgenstein. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein’s picture theory provides a glimpse of reality by indicating that a picture could be true or false from the perspective of reality. He talks about an internal limitation of language rather than an external limitation of language. In Wittgenstein’s later works like Philosophical Investigations, the concept of picture theory has faded away, and he deeply becomes more (...) interested in the ‘use theory of meaning’ and ‘language game.’ My other attempt in this paper is to show Husserl’s theory of meaning and try to find out its compatibility with Wittgenstein’s thoughts. Husserl thinks that as a part of phenomenological experience, ‘meaning’ should be an act character that Wittgenstein rejected as an appeal of inner experience. Like Mohanty, I also attempt to show the Husserlian idea of meaning as an essence that is related to the meaning rather than linguistics. Both the giants are talking about description of language from different levels. My effort would be to illustrate how these two giant thinkers proclaim their meaning theories in such a way that leads to a well-known internalism versus externalism debate in the philosophy of mind and language. (shrink)

_What is psychotherapy about?_ _What are the similarities and differences of its many forms?_ _What are the most recent developments in the field?_ _Introduction to Psychotherapy_ has been an essential reference book since its publication in 1979, and is regularly included in reading lists for trainee psychotherapists, psychiatrists and other professionals. It is often recommended to interested lay people and prospective patients. This third edition takes into account recent changes in psychotherapy theory, practice and research. The authors are all psychoanalysts. (...) The first edition arose from the experiences of Dennis Brown and Jonathan Pedder working and teaching together as Consultant Psychotherapists at St Mary's Hospital and Medical School, London. (shrink)

This book provides a comprehensive commentary of the Philebus designed to shed light on the nature and function of the good in Plato’s philosophy as a whole. Topics discussed include dialectic, pleasure, epistemology, and the relations between metaphysics and ethics.

McTaggart's ideas on the unreality of time as expressed in "The Nature of Existence" have retained great interest for many years for scholars, academics and other philosophers. In this essay, there is a brief discussion which mentions some of the high points of this philosophical interest, and goes on to apply his ideas to modern physics and neuroscience. It does not discuss McTaggart's C and D series, but does emphasise how the use of derived versions of both his A and (...) B series can be of great virtue in discussing both the abstract physics of time, and the present and future importance of McTaggart's ideas to the subject of time. Indeed an experiment using human volunteers and dynamic systems modelling which was carried out is described, which illustrates this fact. The Many Bubble Interpretation, which also derives from McTaggart's ideas, is discussed and various examples of its use and effectiveness are referred to. The Schrodinger Cat paradox is essentially resolved in principle, the quantum Zeno effect interpretable, Kwiat's recent result referred to, and the newly discovered reverse Stickgold effect described. (shrink)

Various facets of the MBI are discussed, and how it can be used in connection with experimental philosophy, experimental psychology and neuroscience. Brief historical references are given. The large implications of the MBI with regards to McTaggart's paradox and the resolution of the difficulties with quantum mechanics is mentioned. Later sections deal with the mereological fallacy, multiple universes, teletransportation, mind cloning and mind splitting. Dreamwork is chosen as a prime example of the use of the MBI and recent work by (...) Tononi and Baars is referred to. (shrink)

The DSM-III, DSM-IV, DSM-IV-TR and ICD-10 have judiciously minimized discussion of etiologies to distance clinical psychiatry from Freudian psychoanalysis. With this goal mostly achieved, discussion of etiological factors should be reintroduced into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. A research agenda for the DSM-V advocated the "development of a pathophysiologically based classification system". The author critically reviews the neuroevolutionary literature on stress-induced and fear circuitry disorders and related amygdala-driven, species-atypical fear behaviors of clinical severity in adult (...) humans. Over 30 empirically testable/falsifiable predictions are presented. It is noted that in DSM-IV-TR and ICD-10, the classification of stress and fear circuitry disorders is neither mode-of-acquisition-based nor brain-evolution-based. For example, snake phobia and dog phobia are clustered together. Similarly, research on blood-injection-injury-type-specific phobia clusters two fears different in their innateness: 1) an arguably ontogenetic memory-trace-overconsolidation-based fear and 2) a hardwired fear of the sight of one's blood or a sharp object penetrating one's skin. Genetic architecture-charting of fear-circuitry-related traits has been challenging. Various, non-phenotype-based architectures can serve as targets for research. In this article, the author will propose one such alternative genetic architecture. This article was inspired by the following: A) Nesse's "Smoke-Detector Principle", B) the increasing suspicion that the "smooth" rather than "lumpy" distribution of complex psychiatric phenotypes may in some cases be accounted for by oligogenic transmission, and C) insights from the initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome and comparison with the human genome by the Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium published in late 2005. Neuroevolutionary insights relevant to fear circuitry symptoms that primarily emerge overconsolidationally are presented. Also introduced is a human-evolution-based principle for clustering innate fear traits. The "Neuroevolutionary Time-depth Principle" of innate fears proposed in this article may be useful in the development of a neuroevolution-based taxonomic re-clustering of stress-triggered and fear-circuitry disorders in DSM-V. Four broad clusters of evolved fear circuits are proposed based on their time-depths: 1) Mesozoic circuits hardwired by wild-type alleles driven to fixation by Mesozoic selective sweeps; 2) Cenozoic circuits relevant to many specific phobias; 3) mid Paleolithic and upper Paleolithic circuits ; 4) Neolithic circuits. More importantly, the author presents evolutionary perspectives on warzone-related PTSD, Combat-Stress Reaction, Combat-related Stress, Operational-Stress, and other deployment-stress-induced symptoms. The Neuroevolutionary Time-depth Principle presented in this article may help explain the dissimilar stress-resilience levels following different types of acute threat to survival of oneself or one's progency. PTSD rates following exposure to lethal inter-group violence are usually 5-10 times higher than rates following large-scale natural disasters such as forest fires, floods, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes. The author predicts that both intentionally-caused large-scale bioevent-disasters, as well as natural bioevents such as SARS and avian flu pandemics will be an exception and are likely to be followed by PTSD rates approaching those that follow warzone exposure. During bioevents, Amygdala-driven and locus-coeruleus-driven epidemic pseudosomatic symptoms may be an order of magnitude more common than infection-caused cytokine-driven symptoms. Implications for the red cross and FEMA are discussed. It is also argued that hospital phobia as well as dog phobia, bird phobia and bat phobia require re-taxonomization in DSM-V in a new "overconsolidational disorders" category anchored around PTSD. The overconsolidational spectrum category may be conceptualized as straddling the fear circuitry spectrum disorders and the affective spectrum disorders categories, and may be a category for which Pitman's secondary prevention propranolol regimen may be specifically indicated as a "morning after pill" intervention. Predictions are presented regarding obsessive-compulsive disorder and "culture-bound" acute anxiety symptoms. Also discussed are insights relevant to pseudoneurological symptoms and to the forthcoming Dissociative-Conversive disorders category in DSM-V, including what the author terms fright-triggered acute pseudo-localized symptoms. Speculations based on studies of the human abnormal-spindle-like, microcephaly-associated gene, the microcephaly primary autosomal recessive gene, and the forkhead box p2 gene are made and incorporated into what is termed "The pre-FOXP2 Hypothesis of Blood-Injection-Injury Phobia." Finally, the author argues for a non-reductionistic fusion of "distal neurobiology" with clinical "proximal neurobiology," utilizing neurological heuristics. It is noted that the value of re-clustering fear traits based on behavioral ethology, human-phylogenomics-derived endophenotypes and on ontogenomics can be confirmed or disconfirmed using epidemiological or twin studies and psychiatric genomics. (shrink)

Emergent properties (EPs) are not causally reducible to the properties of a complex system’s elements. If a system’s properties cannot be reduced to those of any of its components, then that system is effectively a singular entity (SE). EPs are thus not properties of known complexes, but of SEs. A precise description of the parameters necessary to observe a physical system as an SE is thus necessary to establish under what conditions properties are understood as emergent. That description is provided (...) in terms of the temporal dynamics of systems and their internal/external interactions. (shrink)

Resnik’s argument relies upon an undefended and unjustified overvaluation of liberty. First, he overlooks some important arguments in favour of restrictions to liberty, and his consideration of the two he does review is unfair; second his account grossly overestimates the autonomy of our food choices; and lastly his mechanism for balancing liberty against other concerns involves an illicit double counting of the weight of individual liberty.