The article deals with the mythological creativity of G.R.R. Tolkien as a socio-cultural phenomenon associated with the values of European culture. The author proceeds from the hypothesis that the myth is the embodiment of social identity, this function it retains after the loss of its ideological functions. The revival of literary mythology in the XIX-XX centuries there is an attempt to update this feature of the myth. The success of the literary myth is due to the fact that he was (...) able to absorb and Express the basic values of society. Tolkien’s work is one of the successful examples of the literary embodiment of socially significant values, combining both traditional values and value formations characteristic of the modern era. The article shows that Tolkien’s work has organically absorbed the pagan basis, the Christian attitude, and the values characteristic of the XX century. Pagan heroic principle, Christian mercy, the idea of freedom, democracy-all this is organically intertwined in the works of Tolkien, their success is due to the harmony of the whole range of social attitudes represented in the European consciousness of the mid XX century. Currently, the decline in interest in Tolkien is a reflection of the change of value preferences of European culture. (shrink)

Representation of quantum states by statistical ensembles on the quantum phase space in the Hamiltonian form of quantum mechanics is analyzed. Various mathematical properties and some physical interpretations of the equivalence classes of ensembles representing a mixed quantum state in the Hamiltonian formulation are examined. In particular, non-uniqueness of the quantum phase space probability density associated with the quantum mixed state, Liouville dynamics of the probability densities and the possibility to represent the reduced states of bipartite systems by marginal distributions (...) are discussed in detail. These considerations are used to study ensembles of hybrid quantum-classical systems. In particular, nonlinear evolution of a single hybrid system in a pure state and unequal evolutions of initially equivalent ensembles are discussed in the context of coupled hybrid systems. (shrink)

Psychiatric diagnosis and prognosis is fraught with important philosophical and conceptual problems. This chapter focuses on some epistemological issues and moral issues that arise in contemporary psychiatric practice. It examines various clinical and actuarial techniques for psychiatric diagnosis, ordered very loosely in terms of how "structured" or "automated" they are. The chapter makes the case for assessing psychiatric treatments with controlled experiments, raises several epistemological dangers that arise from relying on uncontrolled investigations, and considers some of the unique methodological and (...) ethical issues that arise when trying to assess talk therapy. (shrink)

Big cities and growing industrial areas bring high risk of different kinds of pollutions which would implicate to the quality of life of the society. Discovering and monitoring of polluted areas using autonomous mobile robots is nowadays a frequently considered solution concerning both environmental and human safety problems. Being part of a distributed control system, such robots can help to improve the efficiency of the existing conventional pollution prevention systems. On the other hand, during the last decade, wireless sensor networks (...) have provoked the interest of specialists from different areas by imposing a large number of theoretical and practical challenges related to their implementation. This paper attempts to deal with both issues by presenting a possible way for building robotized WSNs that can be suitable for solving different environmental monitoring tasks. The goal is to transform the WSN into an adaptive sensor system with intelligent behavior that can be used to discover and track spots or areas where given monitored environmental parameters violate defined thresholds. The inclusion of robotized agents into the WSN structure can provide additional flexibility with respect to the installation of the network sensors and allow reliable information gathering and transfer. The proposed algorithmic methods have been tested on a pre-built laboratory prototype of a robotized WSN. The robotized agents have been built using iRobot Create mobile platforms that are additionally equipped with a single-chip computers Gumstix Verdex pro TM XL6P with various expansion modules. (shrink)

Justice will once take the place which the Magians are keeping now, for it is they who lord it over the world.

Supercommentary on Siddhāntabindu of Madhusūdana Sarasvatī, exegesis of Daśaślokī, treatise of the Advaita school in Indic philosophy, by Śaṅkarācārya.

The problem of responsibility has always been an important factor in moral teachings, for this is a problem not only of theory but of everyday practical life. Any system of moral precepts will be lifeless if it does not postulate some measure of responsibility of an individual for his acts. An unselfish, disinterested life becomes morally damaging if a person cannot foresee the moral consequences of his acts and their effects on the lives of those around him, or if the (...) individual's behavior does not correspond to his convictions and good will but is dictated only by external circumstances. (shrink)

In debates about criteria for human death, several camps have emerged, the main two focusing on either loss of the "organism as a whole" (the mainstream view) or loss of consciousness or "personhood." Controversies also rage over the proper definition of "irreversible" in criteria for death. The situation is reminiscent of the proverbial blind men palpating an elephant; each describes the creature according to the part he can touch. Similarly, each camp grasps some aspect of the complex reality of death. (...) The personhood camp, in contrast to the mainstream "organism" camp, recognizes that a human organism can still be a biological living whole even without brain function. The mainstream camp, in contrast to the personhood camp, recognizes that a person can be permanently, even irreversibly unconscious, and still be a living person so long as his/her body is alive. The author proposes that hylomorphic dualism incorporates both these key insights. But to complete the picture of the entire "death elephant," a fundamental paradigm shift is needed to make sense of other seemingly conflicting insights. The author proposes a "semantic bisection" of the concept of death, analogous to the traditional distinction at the beginning of life between "conception" and "birth." To avoid the semantic baggage associated with the term "death," the two new death-related concepts are referred to as "passing away" (or "deceased") and "deanimation," corresponding, respectively, to sociolegal ceasing-to-be (mirror image of birth) and ontological/theological ceasing-to-be of the bodily organism (mirror image of conception). Regarding criteria, the distinguishing feature is whether the cessation of function is permanent (passing away) or irreversible (deanimation). If the "dead donor rule" were renamed the "deceased donor rule" (both acronyms felicitously being "DDR"), the ethics of organ transplantation from non–heart-beating donors could, in principle, be validly governed by the DDR, even though the donors are not yet ontologically "deanimated." Thus, the paradigm shift satisfies both those who insist on maintaining the DDR and those who claim that it has all along been receiving only lip service and should be explicitly loosened to include those who are "as good as dead." Even so, a number of practical caveats remain to be worked out for non–heart-beating protocols. (shrink)

Contributed articles on the life and works of K. Satchidananda Murty,, Indic philosopher and teacher.

Revisiting African philosophy’s classic questions, D. A. Masolo advances understandings of what it means to be human—whether of African or other origin. Masolo reframes indigenous knowledge as diversity: How are we to understand the place and structure of consciousness? How does the everyday color the world we know? Where are the boundaries between self and other, universal and particular, and individual and community? From here, he takes a dramatic turn toward Africa’s current political situation and considers why individual rights and (...) freedoms have not been recognized, respected, demanded, or enforced. Masolo offers solutions for containing socially destructive conduct and antisocial tendencies by engaging community. His unique thinking about community and the role of the individual extends African philosophy in new, global directions. (shrink)

This paper presents a new formal model for D–N explanation that gives intuitive criteria of acceptability, avoids the known trivializations, and links explanation with confirmation theory. Although set in the twenty-five year tradition of attempts to formalize D–N explanation, it proposes a new direction for the model that is to be distinguished from the syntactical and informational approaches by its introduction of restrictions which derive from the use which the D–N model can have in hypothesis testing. This model, illustrating the (...) verificational approach, revises the classic H–O requirements and amends the notion of partial self-explanation to meet a criticism to which the H–O notion is vulnerable. (shrink)

Lexical Semantics is about the meaning of words. Although obviously a central concern of linguistics, the semantic behaviour of words has been unduly neglected in the current literature, which has tended to emphasize sentential semantics and its relation to formal systems of logic. In this textbook D. A. Cruse establishes in a principled and disciplined way the descriptive and generalizable facts about lexical relations that any formal theory of semantics will have to encompass. Among the topics covered in depth are (...) idiomaticity, lexical ambiguity, synonymy, hierarchical relations such as hyponymy and meronymy, and various types of oppositeness. Syntagmatic relations are also treated in some detail. The discussions are richly illustrated by examples drawn almost entirely from English. Although a familiarity with traditional grammar is assumed, readers with no technical linguistic background will find the exposition always accessible. All readers with an interest in semantics will find in this original text not only essential background but a stimulating new perspective on the field. (shrink)

A three-valued propositional logic is presented, within which the three values are read as ?true?, ?false? and ?nonsense?. A three-valued extended functional calculus, unrestricted by the theory of types, is then developed. Within the latter system, Bochvar analyzes the Russell paradox and the Grelling-Weyl paradox, formally demonstrating the meaninglessness of both.

Physicians have developed a number of implicit and explicit approaches to complex medical decisions. Decision analysis is an explicit, quantitative method of clinical decision making that involves the separation of the probabilities of events from their relative values, or utilities. Its use can help physicians make difficult choices in a manner that promotes true patient participation. Decision analysis also provides a framework for the incorporation of data from multiple sources and for the assessment of the impact of uncertain data on (...) the final decision. Although this approach is imperfect, it represents a significant advance in clinical decision making. (shrink)

Signals to the brain from the flows of energy around the body, varied primarily by declining amounts of food energy in the stomach, can explain the pattern of meals in the laboratory rat, the differences between dark and light phases, and the development of obesity ion the rat wioth VMH lesions but normal sating.

D. A. Lloyd Thomas; VIII—Political Decision Procedures1, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 70, Issue 1, 1 June 1970, Pages 141–160, https://doi.or.

" -- Africa Today "The excellence of this book lies in the wealth of perspectives that it brings to the discussion on what constitutes philosophy, rationality, ...

Myths, misunderstanding and neglect have combined to obscure our understanding of the relationship between left-wing politics and Darwinian science. This article seeks to redress the balance by studying how radical and socialist thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, desperate to legitimate their work with scientific authority, wrestled with the paradoxical challenges Darwinism posed for their politics. By studying eight leading radical and socialist thinkers — ranging from the co-founder of the theory of evolution by natural selection, Alfred (...) Russel Wallace, through to Britain's first Labour Prime Minister, J. Ramsay MacDonald — this article analyses the often tortuous relationship between Darwinism and the left, as well as providing fresh insights into the historiographical debate over ‘continuity’ in radicalism and socialism. A strict definition of ‘Darwinian’ is adopted throughout, in order to help us delineate what was specifically ‘Darwinian’ from what merely reflected the general evolutionary ethos of the age, in left-wing thought, and to move us beyond the sensational and distorting focus on eugenics which has characterized previous studies. (shrink)

Bainbridge’s well known “Ironies of Automation” Analysis, design and evaluation of man–machine systems. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 129–135, 1983. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-029348-6.50026-9) laid out a set of fundamental criticisms surrounding the promises of automation that, even 30 years later, remain both relevant and, in many cases, intractable. Similarly, a set of ironies in technologies for sensor driven self-quantification is laid out here, spanning from instrumental problems in human factors design to much broader social problems. As with automation, these ironies stand in the way (...) of many of the promised benefits of these wearable technologies. It is argued here that without addressing these ironies now, the promises of wearables may not come to fruition, and instead users may experience outcomes that are opposite to those which the designers seek to afford, or, at the very least, those which consumers believe they are being offered. This paper describes four key ironies of sensor driven self-quantification: know more, know better versus no more, no better; greater self-control versus greater social control; well-being versus never being well enough; more choice versus erosion of choice. (shrink)

Upshot: According to its introduction, the aim of Enaction is to “present the paradigm of enaction as a framework for a far-reaching renewal of cognitive science as a whole.” While many of the chapters make progress towards this aim, the book as a whole does not present enactivism as a coherent framework, and it could be argued that enactivism’s embrace of phenomenology means it is no longer a theory of cognition.