Many religious people are alarmed about features of the current age - violence in the media, a pervasive hedonism, a marginalization of religion, and widespread abortion. These concerns influence politics, but just as there should be a separation between church and state, so should there be a balance between religious commitments and secular arguments calling for social reforms. Robert Audi offers a principle of secular rationale, which does not exclude religious grounds for action but which rules out restricting freedom except (...) on grounds that any rational citizen would accept. The book describes the essential commitments of free democracy, explains how religious and secular moral considerations can be integrated to facilitate co-operation in a world of religious pluralism, and proposes ideals of civic virtue that express the mutual respect on which democracy depends. Audi offers a balanced and sophisticated treatment of the relations between religion and politics in a modern, secular society. (shrink)

Ocherk 1. Voprosy ontologii -- Ocherk 2. Voprosy ėtiki i ėstetiki -- Ocherk 3. Voprosy gnoseologii i aksiologii.

This paper proposes a Cournot game organized by three competing firms adopting bounded rationality. According to the marginal profit in the past time step, each firm tries to update its production using local knowledge. In this game, a firm’s preference is represented by a utility function that is derived from a constant elasticity of substitution production function. The game is modeled by a 3-dimensional discrete dynamical system. The equilibria of the system are numerically studied to detect their complex characteristics due (...) to difficulty to get an explicit form for those equilibria. For the proposed utility function, some cases with different value parameters are considered. Numerical simulations are used to provide an experimental evidence for the complex behavior of the evolution of the system. The obtained results show that the system loses its stability due to different types of bifurcations. (shrink)

The 'More-than-Human' reader brings together texts by writers across a wide array of disciplines that reflect on the state of post-anthropocentric thinking today. Focusing on the ecologies and technologies of climate injustice and inequalities, as well as the destructive structures lurking within anthropocentrism, More-than-Human proposes complex entanglements, frictions, and reparative attention across species and beings. Thinking past the centrality of the human subject, the texts that compose this reader begin to imagine networks of ethics and responsibility emerging not from the (...) ideologies of old, but from the messy and complex liveliness around us, and underfoot. (shrink)

Psychology without genuinely thoughtful philosophy winds up as self-help gimmicks; philosophy without the insights & feeling of psychology remains an arcane academic game out of touch with life. By re-joining spirit & soul, this book is a major work of both philosophy & psychology. Casey asks puzzling questions & gives lasting answers. In a clear & vivid manner, one of America's best professional thinkers takes up one of the great themes of imagination, fantasy, hallucination, remembering & perceiving. Film & architecture (...) provide surprising material for his brilliant & useful account of basic philosophical problems which are also major mysteries of the soul. (shrink)

Historically, the care of hospitalized children has evolved from being performed in isolation from parents to a situation where the parents and the child are regarded as a unit, and parents and nurses as equal partners in the child’s care. Parents are totally dependent on professionals’ knowledge and expertise, while nurses are dependent on the children’s emotional connection with their parents in order to provide optimal care. Even when interdependency exists, nurses as professionals hold the power to decide whether and (...) to what extent parents should be involved in their child’s care. This article focuses on nurses’ responsibility to act ethically and reflectively in a collaborative partnership with parents. To illuminate the issue of nurses as moral practitioners, we present an observation of contemporary child care, and discuss it from the perspective of the Danish moral philosopher KE Løgstrup and his book The ethical demand. (shrink)

Based on a nonlinear demand function and a market-clearing price, a cobweb model is introduced in this paper. A gradient mechanism that depends on the marginal profit is adopted to form the 1D discrete dynamic cobweb map. Analytical studies show that the map possesses four fixed points and only one attains the profit maximization. The stability/instability conditions for this fixed point are calculated and numerically studied. The numerical studies provide some insights about the cobweb map and confirm that this fixed (...) point can be destabilized due to period-doubling bifurcation. The second part of the paper discusses the memory factor on the stabilization of the map’s equilibrium point. A gradient mechanism that depends on the marginal profit in the past two time steps is adopted to incorporate memory in the model. Hence, a 2D discrete dynamic map is constructed. Through theoretical and numerical investigations, we show that the equilibrium point of the 2D map becomes unstable due to two types of bifurcations that are Neimark–Sacker and flip bifurcations. Furthermore, the influence of the speed of adjustment parameter on the map’s equilibrium is analyzed via numerical experiments. (shrink)

A quadratic utility function is introduced in this paper to study the dynamic characteristics of Cournot duopoly game. Based on the bounded rationality mechanism, a discrete dynamical map that describes the game’s dynamic is obtained. The map possesses only one equilibrium point which is Nash point. The stability conditions for this point are analyzed. These conditions show that the point becomes unstable due to two bifurcation types that are flip and Neimark–Sacker. The synchronization property for that map is studied. Through (...) local and global analysis, some dynamics of attracting sets are investigated. This analysis gives some insights on the basis of those sets and the shape of the critical curves. It also shows some lobes found in those attracting sets which are constructed due to the origin focal point. (shrink)

On the fundamentals of Mimamsa philosophy.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has followed the prevailing view in the federal courts by holding that state Medicaid funds must cover the same kinds of abortions as provided for under the 1994 Hyde Amendment. On July 25, 1995, the court held that a Pennsylvania law was preempted to the extent that it restricted Medicaid funding for abortions beyond the limits set by federal law ) by imposing additional procedures not prescribed by the Hyde Amendment.Particularly, (...) the court held that the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Acts ), whch requires victims of rape and incest to report the crime to law enforcement officials before Medicaid abortion funding is made available, exceeded the reporting requirements set by the Hyde Amendment, which provides a waiver for patients who are physically or mentally unable to comply with the reporting requirement. (shrink)

Moses Maimondes, born March 30, 1135, the eight hundredth anniversary of whose birth we now commemorate, is one of those universal spirits who mastered the whole realm of knowledge of their time. His fruitful and extensive literary activity covered many fields: astronomy, medicine, Talmud, and philosophy. His works on medicine were in former tunes highly esteemed. In the field of philosophy he strove for the synthesis of Aristotelianism and revealed religion, an endeavour which was of paramount importance for the later (...) development of philosophic thought. His influence as a philosopher is not confined to the sphere of Jewish thought, but has left a lasting impression on the history of philosophy in general. (shrink)

Commentary on Tarkasaṅgraha of Annambhaṭṭa, 17th cent., work on Nyaya and Vaiśeṣika philosophy; critical edition with complete text.

Seminar papers on Dvaitadvaita philosophy with reference to Advaitabrahmasiddhi of Madhusūdana Sarasvatī and Nyāyāmr̥ta of Vyāsatīrtha, 1460-1539.

Study of Tārkikarakṣā of Varadarāja Miśra, 11th cent., work on Nyaya and Vaiśeṣika philosophy.

Prologue, invitation to thinking about God In the Hebrew Bible? -- Part I, questions about God? -- Why does God in the Bible have a body? -- What do God's body parts in the Bible mean? -- Why is God angry in the Bible? -- Does God in the Bible have gender or sexuality? -- Part II, questions about God in the world? -- What can creation tell us about God? -- Who-or what-is the Satan? -- Why do people suffer (...) according to the Hebrew Bible? -- Epilogue, God in the Bible and beyond. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 12, Page 44-46, December 2011.

To support the claim that the approximate number system represents rational numbers, Clarke and Beck argue that number perception is abstract and characterized by a second-order character. However, converging evidence from visual illusions and psychophysics suggests that perceived number is not abstract, but rather, is perceptually interdependent with other magnitudes. Moreover, number, as a concept, is second-order, but number, as a percept, is not.

La crisis prolifera en los discursos que tratan de responder a perturbaciones e incertidumbres. Sin embargo apenas se recuerda que crisis está emparentada tanto con crítica como con criterio; quizá radique ahí el que cada vez sea más desusada la práctica de someter a crítica los propios criterios, no sólo los ajenos. Dicha práctica revela la crisis como un potente analizador de nuestras (in)capacidades, y no tanto por lo que respecta a establecer medidas extraordinarias sino más bien en relación al (...) restablecimiento de lo ordinario a partir de la asunción de tensiones que en la misma se concitan. La crisis se hace global porque toca a transformaciones decisivas en nuestros criterios de dependencia, y esto supone un replanteamiento de la manera en que damos forma a nuestro entorno. (shrink)