Improvements in the health capital of citizens are central to the development of countries. By exploiting steep decreases in antiretroviral drug prices and the subsequent increases in antiretroviral therapy (ART) coverage, we test whether the resulting improvements in the health of the population are associated with the prevalence of entrepreneurial activity and whether entrepreneurial activity strengthens the relationship between ART coverage and a country’s development. Drawing on a sample of 87 low- and middle-income countries (2006–2019), we find that a 1% (...) increase in ART coverage is associated with a 1.5% increase in the number of newly registered limited liability firms; however, there is no significant relationship with (male or female) self-employment. Higher ART coverage is particularly associated with development—as proxied by gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and the Human Development Index—in countries with low levels of new business formation and high proportions of self-employment. (shrink)

This paper discusses certain parallels between the work of Jean Gebser, the European philosopher and student of consciousness, and A Course in Miracles , a contemporary spiritual system. More specifically, it 1) establishes parallels between Gebser’s conception of the ego, especially its basis in anger, and the ego according to ACIM, and 2) shows how a forgiveness exercise may lead to a time-free present, called in ACIM, “The Holy Instant.”.

Cosmopolitism takes up a crucial systematic point in Kant’s philosophy: between philosophy of history and anthropology on the one hand, the three critiques on the other hand. Binding together the three questions – What can I know, shall I do, may I hope? – by the fourth question – What ist human? – is not possible without cosmopolitism, as the eminent expression of character of mankind in history. Thus the synthesis of all parts of philosophy has already been called Kant’s (...) „Fourth Critique“, i.e. Critique of historical reason connected with critical anthopology. Kant’s systematic, metaphysical, but critical concepts for eschatology as well as „origin“ are pointed out, whereas their devastating uncritical understanding provides radicalistic obstacles for cosmopolitism. Overwhelming these obstacles, however, consequently requires self-criticism of enlightenment. (shrink)

The integration of biomedical terminologies is indispensable to the process of information integration. When terminologies are linked merely through the alignment of their leaf terms, however, differences in context and ontological structure are ignored. Making use of the SNAP and SPAN ontologies, we show how three reference domain ontologies can be integrated at a higher level, through what we shall call the OBR framework (for: Ontology of Biomedical Reality). OBR is designed to facilitate inference across the boundaries of domain ontologies (...) in anatomy, physiology and pathology. (shrink)

Many attempts have been made in recent months to throw light on the problem of vagueness. That perfect precision is an ideal not to be attained by any language seems clear. But the obvious fact is that words and sentences in our languages are not so precise as we should like to have them, and we are naturally concerned with finding some sort of device by which vagueness can, in the first place, be detected and measured, and, in the second (...) place, eliminated or reduced to a minimum. I shall not be concerned in what follows with these various special attempts to meet the problem. My task is the somewhat more general one of showing that there are other factors contributing to vagueness, one of which is of particular significance when we leave the realm of ostensively defined symbols and begin to concern ourselves with suppositional symbols, constructs and hypotheses. (shrink)

In what follows I shall consider symbols only in their function as conveyors of meanings. That symbols have emotive and volitional properties as well, that they have elaborate and complicated relations to the self which uses them, that they are themselves physical counters, i.e., noises, visual objects, etc.,—all of these facts I recognize but choose to neglect. When symbols are considered merely as instruments for the transfer of meanings, only one important assumption is involved, viz., symbols which are precisely defined (...) are to be preferred to symbols which either are undefined or are defined inadequately. In other words, the task of a theory of meaning is that of showing how symbols take on a maximum degree of precision in significance. (shrink)

I suppose it is generally agreed that the task of science is to render intelligible, or in some way account for, the objects and events of our experience. Usually we say that the job of science is to explain. While this is a satisfactory formulation for most purposes, it hides a difficulty. What is meant by “explanation”? The many interpretations of this word divide scientists and philosophers of science into sharply differentiated schools. For some “explanation” means answering the question, Why?; (...) for others it means merely describing. For some it means finding causes; for others it means finding effects or abandoning entirely the search for causes and effects. For some it means employing quantitative methods only; for others it means supplementing or replacing quantitative methods by qualitative. For some it means interpreting or understanding; for others it means merely adjusting oneself in a practical way. (shrink)

Some recent and historical writers in the philosophy of science have concerned themselves with a certain problem which seems to occupy, at least in the minds of those who have written about it, a position of peculiar importance. Whether the problem is really as significant as its authors maintain need not be decided here; certainly many writers in this area have either neglected it or made only vague allusions to it. It can best be described as the problem of the (...) development of science, and it is usually solved in terms of a certain theory that science passes in its growth, either naturally or under the control of conscious logical techniques, through various “stages” or “phases.” For some strange reason these levels are usually exactly three in number. One would like to believe that this number is not a magic one, but empirically demanded by the actual way in which the sciences develop. But the fact that the descriptions of these stages in the writings of the various authors appear to agree only in their triplicity, and not in content, would incline one to believe otherwise. There is, in fact, the slight suspicion that the number three has been preferred to the number two simply because a triad may be ordered in a way in which a couple may not, and to the number four or any larger number merely because of the preference for simplicity over complexity. (shrink)

The extent to which the scientific method has yielded to analysis in recent years serves only to emphasize by contrast the presence within that method of an irrational element. For it is becoming increasingly evident that whatever one may say of the logical and psychological character of the pre-inductive operations, of the formal processes involved in deducing the consequences of a given theory, of the technique of experimental corroboration, and of certain other aspects of the scientific method, there is one (...) phase of the movement which remains a surd. This is the act of the creative imagination through which hypotheses and theories are called into being. Its mysterious character is exhibited in the terminology which is employed in describing it, in the variety and inconstancy of the conditions which give rise to it, in the apparent impossibility of controlling it, and in the impossibility of recognizing completely the adequacy of its results when it does occur. It is variously described as an act of intuition, mystic revelation, divine insight, a flash of understanding; it arises out of the greatest variety of conditions: acute and prolonged attention to the data in the confinement of the laboratory, or the complete relaxation of a walk in the country, or the intense mental effort upon a problem in a wholly unrelated field; it forbids direction, in fact it seems to arise most readily when the element of effort and control is conspicuously absent; it cannot even be certainly identified, for many supposed acts of discovery prove later to have produced only groundless fancies and absurd creations of the unguided imagination. (shrink)

The term qittīer designates the act of burning the food offerings, the 'iššîm, within the ritual sequence of all three types of sacrifice, the zébach, the ōlāh, and the minchāh. Incense is not an 'iššeh substance and is never associated with this piel conjugation. Qittēr appears to have been limited to intransitive use, while the synonyms hiqtîr and heelāh were used predominantly in transitive constructions. By the exilic or post-exilic period, hiqtîr seems to have become the preferred form for intransitive (...) use as well, supplanting qittēr completely. The term has no overtones of illegitimacy, as commonly presumed. (shrink)