Family planning is the usual modern route to producing a small family. Can human behavioral ecology provide a framework for understanding family planning behavior? Hillard S. Kaplan (Yearb. Phys. Anthropol. 39:91–135) has proposed a general theory of human parental investment based on the importance of skills development in children. As modern, skills-based, competitive market economies are established, parental investment strategies would be predicted to become oriented toward producing increasingly competitive offspring in a pattern of coordinated investment in their embodied capital—in (...) other words, skills training along with good health to ensure their long-term productivity. Parental embodied capital and resources are also expected to be associated with motivation to produce competitive offspring. The basic parental investment trade-off between quality and quantity should predict greater investment in fewer children and the adoption of family planning behavior. Data on family planning in two ethnic groups in Northeast India (Khasi and Bengali) currently experiencing early-phase transition into modern market economies from very different social and ecological baselines are examined within this analytical framework. The results show a mixture of strategies in conjunction with family planning that involve decreased as well as increased investment in the embodied capital of children among Bengali and a divergence of investments in education and health among Khasi. These mixtures of strategies provide some insight into the motivations to use family planning in the face of economic transition, given differing local cultural and ecological conditions and the opportunity structures they provide. (shrink)

A case is made for supposing that the total probability accounted for in a decision analysis is less than unity. This is done by constructing a measure on the set of all codes for computable functions in such a way that the measure of every effectively accountable subset is bounded by a number <1. The consistency of these measures with the Savage axioms for rational preference is established. Implications for applied decision theory are outlined.

This paper is a portrayal of how social responsibility performance evaluation can act as an accounting measure of management efficiency. In fact, it has given much importance to socio-economic and socio-human obligations to others. The paper attempts to show that these days there is a great need to emphasise more clearly social responsibility, which the corporate sector can and should undertake. The theme of the paper is that the scope of corporate social responsibility encompasses not only economic well-being but also (...) the human aspects of life. In addition, if management of a corporation performs its social responsibility well, one may say that management has done its job efficiently. This study is based on mainly literature review. Analytical thinking is also another building block of this paper. However, the limitation of this study is that no data of the existing situation of Bangladesh or India pertaining to the subject matter referred to in the present paper has been used. (shrink)

Although there are various studies comparing Greek and Indian philosophy and religion, and Chinese and Western philosophy and religion, Brahman and Dao: Comparatives Studies in Indian and Chinese Philosophy and Religion is a first of its kind that brings together Indian and Chinese philosophies and religions. Brahman and Dao helps close the gap on a much needed examination on the rich history of Buddhist transmission to China, and the many generations of Indian Buddhist missionaries to China and Chinese Buddhist pilgrims (...) to India, including the legendary Bodhidharma, and Faxian and Xuanzang. (shrink)

This essay argues for a 'relationist' treatment of intentional identity sentences like (1) "Hob believes that a witch blighted Bob's mare and Nob believes that she killed Cob's sow" (Geach 1967). According to relationism, facts of the form "a believes that p and b believes that q" are not in general reducible to facts of the form "c believes that r". We first argue that extant, non-relationist treatments of intentional identity are unsatisfactory, and then go on to motivate and explore (...) a relationist alternative in some detail. We show that the general thesis of relationism can be directly motivated via cases already discussed in the literature, and then develop a particular version of relationism couched in the possible worlds framework. The resulting theory avoids the problems facing its non-relationist rivals, and yields a natural account of the truth-conditions of (1), truth-conditions which can be generated in a compositional manner by a version of dynamic semantics. The theory also helps us to cleanly separate semantic questions about intentional identity from metasemantic ones. (shrink)

A intervenção histórica de Jung constitui, em nossa opinião, uma proposta de revitalização, na modernidade, de uma filosofia soteriológica que se ancora, estrategicamente, no contexto disciplinar de uma “psicologia científica”. Enquanto “clínica da meia-idade” ou “clínica da individuação”, o modelo que mais diretamente inspira a psicologia analítica de Jung é o athanasius pharmakon dos antigos - a “medicina da imortalidade”. Seu arcabouço conceitual, ao invés de uma teoria científica de pretensões universalizantes, consagra-se como linguagem-força que estrutura e sustenta, no Ocidente (...) moderno, uma reflexão dialógica e conversacional analista-analisando, comprometida com a eliminação sistemática dos “invólucros falsos” que encobrem o Si-Mesmo e com a realização de uma verdade existencialmente transformadora que promove, em definitivo, a plenitude existencial. Para sustentar essa linha interpretativa, fazemos recurso à doutrina indiana dos Puruṣārthas, em especial ao processo de transição entre dharma e mokṣa. (shrink)

This volume contains the invited lectures and a selection of the contributed papers and posters of the workshop on "Fluctuations and Sensitivity in Nonequil ibrium Systems", held at the Joe C. Thompson Conference Center, Un i vers ity of Texas at Austin, March 12-16, 1984. The workshop dealt with stochastic phenomena and sensi­ tivity in nonequilibrium systems from a macroscopic point of view. Durin9 the last few years it has been realized that the role of fluctuations is far less trivial (...) in systems far from equilibrium than in systems under thermodynamic equilibrium condi­ tions. It was found that random fluctuations often are a determining factor for the state adopted by macroscopic systems and cannot be regarded as secondary effects of minor importance. Further, nonequilibrium systems are also very sensitive to small systematic changes in their environment. The main aims of the workshop were: i) to provide scientists with an occasion to acquaint themselves with the state of the art in fluctuation theory and sensitivity analysis; ii) to provide a forum for the presentation of recent advances in theory and experiment; iii) to bring toge­ ther theoreticians and experimentalists in order to delineate the major open problems and to formulate strategies to tackle these problems. The organizing committee of the workshop consisted of W. Horsthemke, O. K. Konde­ pudi, G. Dewel, G. Nicolis, I. Prigogine and L. Reichl. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Remembering Jitendra Nath MohantyArindam Chakrabarti (bio)The only philosopher in the global history of philosophy who read and taught (in the original Sanskrit, German, and English) Patañjali, Vyāsa, Śaṅkara, Gangeśa, Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Frege, Wittgenstein, Hume, McTaggart, Russell, Davidson, and Dummett with equal expertise, depth, and hermeneutic originality is no more. Jitendra Nath Mohanty, who passed away on the 7th of March 2023, was emeritus professor of (...) philosophy at Temple University, Philadelphia. In the last decade of his life, he used to spend long periods in his home in Kolkata, the city where he studied as an undergraduate. Born in in 1928 in Cuttack, Orissa, India, Mohanty ranked first in all public examinations and in his B.A. at Presidency College, Kolkata and his M.A. examination at the University of Calcutta. After receiving a Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen in 1954, he came back to India and continued his traditional-style tutelage under two great Sanskrit Pandits: Ananta Tarkatirtha (for Navya Nyāya) and Mahamahopadhyaya Yogendranath Bagchi (for Advaita Vedānta). In his long academic career, he taught at the University of Burdwan, the University of Calcutta, the New School for Social Research, the University of Oklahoma, Emory University, and Temple University and held visiting professorships at All Souls College Oxford and Jadavpur University, Kolkata.JNM was trained equally thoroughly in three distinct traditions and styles of philosophy. Even great modern Indian philosophers of the twentieth century, such as K. C. Bhattacharya, B. N. Seal, R. D. Ranade, Radhakrishnan, B. K. Matilal, Daya Krishna, and R. C. Gandhi, could claim scholarly fluency in at most two traditions (of course the "Indian tradition" itself is a maddeningly complex plurality of traditions often sharing very little in common—e.g., Abhidharma Buddhism and Mādhva Dualist Vedānta). But Mohanty was well-versed in and collected insights and inspiration from European (Continental) Phenomenology, and Analytic Anglo-American Philosophy and several of the diverse Sanskrit Indian Philosophical schools of thought. More importantly, as can be demonstrated in detail, it is his expertise in the pluralistic yet both logically and phenomenologically rigorous styles of classical Indian philosophies that made him uniquely capable of doing the bridgework between continental and analytic philosophies of the West—between Husserl and Frege, for example. [End Page 1]Within philosophy in general his interests ranged from metaphysics to epistemology, ethics, social philosophy, philosophy of physics (especially Time), Logic, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of language and mind. Among his numerous publications, the following books achieved bench-mark status in their respective fields: Gaṅgeśa's Theory of Truth: Containing the Text of Gaṅgeśa's Prāmāṇya (jñapti) vāda (Santiniketan: Visva-Bharati, India, 1966); Reason and Tradition in Indian Thought: An Essay on the Nature of Indian Philosophical Thinking (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Classical Indian Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2002); The Self and its Other (Oxford University Press, 2000); Logic, Truth, and the Modalities (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999; Jadavpur University, Kolkata, 1999); The Concept of Intentionality (St. Louis: Warren H. Green, 1972); Phenomenology: Between Essentialism and Transcendental Philosophy (Northwestern University Press, 1997); Husserl and Frege (Indiana University Press, 1982); Edmund Husserl's Theory of Meaning (Springer, 1976); and The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl: A Historical Development (Yale University Press, 2008). His charming and inspiring intellectual autobiography was published in 2012 by Oxford University press with the title Between Two Worlds: East and West, an Autobiography. Some of his classic papers are collected in the volume edited with an introduction by Purushottama Billimoria: J. N. Mohanty: Essays on Indian Philosophy Traditional and Modern (New York and New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002). Philosophy East and West is going to publish a special issue devoted to JNM's life-time achievements in different branches and traditions of philosophy. [End Page 2]Arindam Chakrabarti Philosophy Department, University of Hawai'[email protected] © 2024 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

The relevance of the research In the face of increasing global competition, business was challenged to seek new methods for creating their competitive advantage and at the same time the decreasing budgets of higher education institutions were pressured to find new streams of financing. In both cases, collaboration is seen as an important method for achieving their objectives but universities of today have as well to find the appropriate balance between teaching, basic and applied research, and entrepreneurship. Ten types of (...) university-business collaboration are related quite directly to the missions of the university and the needs of business. Curriculum development and delivery is one of that ten, which aim is to develop human resources to modern society. A summary of benefits was identified in the academic literature as arising from UBC in relation to curriculum design and delivery for multiple stakeholders including academics, students, university administration, business and community. Overall, UBC may take various forms that are influenced by different factors but even if all stakeholders seeks the main purpose of this process they may get different benefits. The research aim was to identify the benefits of universities and business organizations in curriculum development. The objectives of the research: to determine the instruments and activities used for universities and business organizations collaboration, to identify universities and business organizations benefits from collaboration to the various stakeholder groups. Analysis of recent research and publications. UBC became the subject of education and management sciences. P. D'Este and M. Perkmann explored the factors of UBC, the types were identified by T. Davey, T. Baaken, V. Galan Muros, A. Meerman, T. Barnes, A. Gibbons and the levels of UBC were represented by B.N. Ponomariov, P.C. Boardman, T. Davey, R. Laužackas. The benefits of UBC to research quality have been studied by researchers T. Davey, M. Crespo, N. Carayol, H. Forsyth, R. Laxton, S. Lamichhane, T. Nath Sharma, P. Van der Sijde and H. Dridi, as a collaborative factor for learning improvement by researchers K. Ramakrishnan, N.M. Yasin, A. Draghici. An overview of the study of this object shows that it was mostly analysed in vocational training and in last ten years’ period the publications is growing in UBC. Research methodology. The paper seeks to represent the UBC benefits for different stakeholders and collaboration forms, which was used by university with the business organizations from leisure industry. Quantitative research was used to gain quantify opinions of benefits and instruments of UBC – and generalize results from a larger sample population. Methods applied for the research was scientific literature review, a questionnaire survey for business organization leaders and mathematical statistics. Conclusion. The benefits of the UVB were grouped according to the type of stakeholder's: society, university administration, academics, entrepreneurs, students. The benefits of business stakeholders include additional funding, access to education resources, lecturer and coordinator, support in evaluating the program and developing new study subjects. The highest rated benefit to others stakeholders from their view could be reducing academic staff training costs, as well as business information available to student projects, skills development and student employment opportunities and human resource development in the region. (shrink)

Are there dispositions which not only do not manifest, but which could not manifest? We argue that there are dispositions to Ф in circumstances C where C is impossible, and some where Ф is impossible. Furthermore, postulating these dispositions does useful theoretical work. This paper describes a number of cases of dispositions had by objects even though those dispositions are not possibly manifest, and argues for the importance of these dispositions.

One of the very few accounts in English of German idealism, this ambitious work advances and revises our understanding of both the history and the thought of the classical period of German philosophy. As he traces the structure and evolution of idealism as a doctrine, Frederick Beiser exposes a strong objective, or realist, strain running from Kant to Hegel and identifies the crucial role of the early romantics—Hölderlin, Schlegel, and Novalis—as the founders of absolute idealism.

This book presents an up-to-date, unified treatment of research in bounded arithmetic and complexity of propositional logic, with emphasis on independence proofs and lower bound proofs. The author discusses the deep connections between logic and complexity theory and lists a number of intriguing open problems. An introduction to the basics of logic and complexity theory is followed by discussion of important results in propositional proof systems and systems of bounded arithmetic. More advanced topics are then treated, including polynomial simulations and (...) conservativity results, various witnessing theorems, the translation of bounded formulas (and their proofs) into propositional ones, the method of random partial restrictions and its applications, direct independence proofs, complete systems of partial relations, lower bounds to the size of constant-depth propositional proofs, the method of Boolean valuations, the issue of hard tautologies and optimal proof systems, combinatorics and complexity theory within bounded arithmetic, and relations to complexity issues of predicate calculus. Students and researchers in mathematical logic and complexity theory will find this comprehensive treatment an excellent guide to this expanding interdisciplinary area. (shrink)

Political violence in the form of wars, insurgencies, terrorism and violent rebellion constitutes a major human challenge. C. A. J. Coady brings a philosophical and ethical perspective as he places the problems of war and political violence in the frame of reflective ethics. In this book, Coady re-examines a range of urgent problems pertinent to political violence against the background of a contemporary approach to just war thinking. The problems examined include: the right to make war and conduct war, terrorism, (...) revolution, humanitarianism, mercenary warriors, the ideal of peace and the right way to end war. Coady attempts to vindicate the contemporary relevance of the just war tradition to current problems without applying the tradition in a merely mechanical or uncritical fashion. (shrink)

Lazare Carnot was the unique example in the history of science of someone who inadvertently owed the scientific recognition he eventually achieved to earlier political prominence. He and his son Sadi produced work that derived from their training as engineers and went largely unnoticed by physicists for a generation or more, even though their respective work introduced concepts that proved fundamental when taken up later by other hands. There was, moreover, a filial as well as substantive relation between the work (...) of father and son. Sadi applied to the functioning of heat engines the analysis that his father had developed in his study of the operation of ordinary machines. Specifically, Sadi's idea of a reversible process originated in the use his father made of geometric motions in the analysis of machines in general. (shrink)

C. S. Lewis sets out to persuade his audience of the importance and relevance of universal values such as courage and honor in contemporary society.

Boghossian claims that we can acquire a priori knowledge by means of a certain form of argument, our grasp of whose premises relies on the existence of implicit definitions. I discuss an objection to his ‘analytic theory of the a priori’. The worry is that in order to employ this kind of argument we must already know its conclusion. Boghossian has responded to this type of objection in recent work, but I argue that his responses are unconvincing. Along the way, (...) I resist Ebert’s reasons for thinking that Boghossian’s argument fails to transmit warrant from its premises to its conclusion. (shrink)

Recent evaluation of the practice of euthanasia and related medical decisions at the end of life in the Netherlands has shown a slight decrease in the frequency of physician-assisted death since the enactment of the Euthanasia Law in 2002. This paper focuses on the absence of euthanasia cases concerning patients with dementia and a written advance euthanasia directive, despite the fact that the only real innovation of the Euthanasia Law consisted precisely in allowing physicians to act upon such directives. The (...) author discusses two principal reasons for this absence. One relates to the uncertainty about whether patients with advanced dementia truly experience the suffering they formerly feared. There is reason to assume that they don’t, as a consequence of psychological adaptation and progressive unawareness (anosognosia). The second, more fundamental reason touches upon the ethical relevance of shared understanding and reciprocity. The author argues that, next to autonomy and mercifulness, “reciprocity” is a condition sine qua non for euthanasia. The absence thereof in advanced dementia renders euthanasia morally inconceivable, even if there are signs of suffering and notwithstanding the presence of an advance euthanasia directive. This does not mean, however, that advance euthanasia directives of patients with dementia are worthless. They might very well have a role in the earlier stages of certain subtypes of the disease. To illustrate this point the author presents a case in which the advance directive helped to create a window of opportunity for reciprocity and shared decision-making. (shrink)

Chalmers' (2018) meta-problem of consciousness emphasizes unexpected common ground between otherwise incompatible positions. We argue that the materialist should welcome discussion of the meta-problem. We suggest that the core of the metaproblem is the seeming arbitrariness of subjective experience. This has an unexpected resolution when one moves to an interventionist account of scientific explanation: the same interventions that resolve the hard problem should also resolve the meta-problem.

This is a big-picture book, 2 written with a breadth of focus which I find admirable. It exhibits what's come to be known as the ‘intersubdiscplinary’ approach to philosophy, which is not restricted by traditional boundaries within the discipline but rather proceeds with an eye to all sorts of areas of philosophy where relevant arguments, results, analogies and strategies might be lurking. I approve of this way of doing philosophy; it seems to me that all too often that wheels are (...) reinvented, or crucial points missed, because of a lack of this sort of intersubdisciplinarity.To help guide us through such a broad landscape, this book needed to be well-signposted and clearly written, and it is. It cannot be denied, however, that the ambitious scale of The Nature of Normativity won't be to every taste. For one thing, not everyone likes big pictures. For another, this is a deep, dense and in many ways difficult book, which can only really be appreciated by sitting down with it for hours on end. It will not repay the casual skim-reader, nor is it likely to appeal to those who prefer dipping into philosophy books over reading them wholesale.The book is also long . The view under construction has a great many interlocking elements, including non-reductive normative naturalism, normative realism, a priorist intuitionism, normative internalism, the normativity of intentionality, conceptual-role semantics, contextualism, possible-worlds semantics, and certain ideas about ‘planning’ derived from the recent work of Allan Gibbard. It will be a tough read for specialists who do not share Wedgwood's familiarity with a wide range of subdisciplines, who will either have to content themselves with a superficial reading of many passages or else hunt down the necessary background material to …. (shrink)

The Role of Motivation in Complex Problem SolvingPrevious research on Complex Problem Solving (CPS) has primarily focused on cognitive factors as outlined below. The current paper discusses the role of motivation during CPS and argues that motivation, emotion, and cognition interact and cannot be studied in an isolated manner. Motivation is the process that determines the energization and direction of behavior (Heckhausen, 1991).Three motivation theories and their relation to CPS are examined: McClelland’s achievement motivation, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and Dörner’s (...) needs as outlined in PSI-theory. We chose these three theories for several reasons. First, space forces us to be selective. Second, the three theories are among the most prominent motivational theories. Finally, they are need theories postulating several motivations and not just one. A thinking-aloud protocol is provided to illustrate the role of motivational and cognitive dynamics in CPS. Problems are part of all the domains of human life. The field of CPS investigates problems that are complex, dynamic, and non-transparent (Dörner, 1996). Complex problems consist of many interactively interrelated variables. Dynamic ones change and develop further over time, regardless of whether the involved people take action. And non-transparent problems have many aspects of the problem situation that are unclear or unknown to the involved people. CPS researchers focus exactly on such kinds of problems. Under a narro... (shrink)

This essay corrects an error in the presentation of the Paradox of the Knowledge-Plus Knower, which is the variant of Kaplan and Montague’s Knower Paradox presented in C. Cross 2001: ‘The Paradox of the Knower without Epistemic Closure,’ MIND, 110, pp. 319–33. The correction adds a universally quantified transitivity principle for derivability as an additional assumption leading to paradox. This correction does not affect the status of the Knowledge-Plus paradox as a rebuttal to an argument against epistemic closure, since the (...) quantified transitivity principle is true in the standard model of arithmetic and therefore innocuous. (shrink)

Education is so strongly emphasized in the Chinese culture that academic success is widely regarded as the only indicator of success, while too much physical activity is often discouraged because it drains energy and affects academic concentration. This study investigated the relations among academic achievement, self?esteem, school conduct and physical activity level. The participants were 333 Chinese pre?adolescents (aged 8?12) in Hong Kong. Examination results and conduct grades were obtained from the school records. Global self?esteem was measured with the Physical (...) self?description questionnaire (PSDQ), while physical activity patterns of the children were assessed with the Physical activity questionnaire for children (PAQ?C). Results showed that high academic achievers consistently attained better school conduct marks. However, physical activity level was quite an independent entity that was related neither to academic achievement nor school conduct. Furthermore, regression analyses showed that only academically high?achieving boys and physically active boys had higher self?esteem. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.1 (2000) 106-123 [Access article in PDF] The (Mis)Uses of Cannibalism in Contemporary Cultural Critique C. Richard King At least since 1979, when W. Arens demystified what he termed "the man-eating myth," cannibalism, once a fundamental feature of the anthropological imagination and a primary trope for interpreting cultural difference, has become subject to serious debate and lingering doubt [see Osborne]. Even as some anthropologists have sought to recuperate (...) anthropophagy as a tangible symbolic, ideological, and ritual complex [Brown and Tuzin; Conklin, "'Thus are our Bodies'"; Forsyth; Harris, Good to Eat 199-234; Sanday], a constellation of scholarly projects and popular works has complicated cannibalism by relocating it in the West. Perhaps most visibly, Hollywood cinema has reclaimed cannibalism. Although a handful of films have revived well-worn clichés of dark-skinned savages preparing to consume Westerners, as in King Solomon's Mines and Crocodile Dundee, others have cast the Western subject as cannibal to grapple with the horrors of reluctant cannibalism, as in Alive! [see Fiddes 121-31], to work through the transgressive and terrifying desires associated with psychopathic cannibalism, as in The Silence of the Lambs [Fuss; Halberstam], and importantly to parody the normative beliefs and behaviors of white, middle-class, heterosexual EuroAmericans, as in Eating Raoul and Parents. At the same time, an array of scholars, artists, and activists have invoked cannibalism to fashion critical perspectives on Western cultural practices. In his film Cannibal Tours (1987), Dennis O'Rourke encourages his audiences to think critically about tourists who travel to the Sepik River Valley to encounter reformed cannibals, asking implicitly who the cannibals are, the Melanesians who formerly (were thought to/claim to have) practiced anthropophagy or the tourists who travel to New Guinea to consume them [see Bruner]. Others have pushed the metaphor. Michael Ames, borrowing explicitly from O'Rourke, uses the cannibal to reframe ethnographic museums and their practices. Similarly, Jane Tompkins asserts that "Museums are a form of cannibalism made safe for polite society" [533]. More generally, Crystal Bartolovich playfully glosses consumerism as the cultural logic of the late cannibalism; bell hooks speaks of the EuroAmerican desires for and incorporation of things ethnic as "eating the other"; and Rosalind Morris suggests that cannibalism is the essential metaphor for late capitalism. More telling, however, are a set of overlapping critical projects that offer detailed theorizations [End Page 106] [Begin Page 108] of contemporary anthropophagy. Here, I will examine three that have had an important impact on discussions of tourism, museums, cultural appropriation, and consumption. Dean MacCannell, in an exciting exploratory review of the documentary Cannibal Tours, makes explicit what O'Rourke left unsaid: we are cannibals, and contemporary capitalism is neocannibalism. Perhaps more radically, Jack Forbes argues that Western civilization fosters cannibalism as an embodied, psychosocial condition or psychosis rooted in exploitation and consumption. Inspired at least in part by Forbes, Deborah Root rethinks Western civilization as cannibal culture.Although I am terribly sympathetic with these perspectives, particularly their political commitments and theoretical creativity, I am disturbed by the practices and effects that animate them. Indeed, as powerful as this critical field promises to be, it is at the same time troubling and dangerous. Although it defamiliarizes practices of cultural production and consumption, it does not enhance understanding of the contexts in which individuals and institutions deploy them and does less to effectively challenge or undermine them. In reframing beliefs and behaviors to accentuate productivity and power, it reinstates and reaffirms binaries and, worse, often turns on the same forms of appropriation.* * *Arguably, flesh eating has always promoted the elaborations of differences. Works central to the Western canon mobilize cannibalism to make (sense of) the world. Herodotus offers an early anthropophagic distinction:These Scythian husbandmen then occupy the country eastward for three days' journey.... Beyond this region the country is desert for a great distance; and beyond the desert Androphagi dwell.... The Androphagi have the most savage customs of all men; they pay no regard to justice, nor make use of any established law. They are nomads and wear a dress like a Scythian; they... (shrink)

To say ‘mysticism versus philosophy’ in the context of Islamic civilization means something far different from what it has come to signify in the West, where many philosophers have looked upon mysticism as the abandonment of any attempt to reconcile religious data with intelligent thought. Certainly the Muslim mystics and philosophers sometimes display a certain mutual opposition and antagonism, but never does their relationship even approach incompatibility.

This book reveals the rational basis for historians' descriptions, interpretations and explanations of past events. C. Behan McCullagh defends the practice of history as more reliable than has recently been acknowledged. Historians, he argues, make their accounts of the past as fair as they can and avoid misleading their readers. He explains and discusses postmodern criticisms of history, providing students and teachers of history with a renewed validation of their practice. McCullagh takes the history debate to a new stage with (...) bold replies to the major questions historians face today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Eva Alerby and Cecilia Ferm, “Learning Music: Embodied Experience in the Life-World”C. Victor FungThe authors' choice of using phenomenology as a foundation of their inquiry is appropriate and appealing. They have, to a great extent, achieved their goal to explain music learning from a life-world approach. Descriptions of absolute musicality and relativistic musicality in the opening paragraphs remind me of the good old "nature versus nurture" argument. (...) Do the authors intend to relate musicality to musical ability or aptitude as defined by psychologists? If musicality is "the ability to make something of one's own," does it mean that the authors have taken on a relativistic view and believe that musicality can be acquired?At the onset of the essay, musicality is described as emotional or cognitive phenomena. I would be interested to know what role a psychomotor phenomenon plays in musicality. The authors later describe "motor knowledge" in the context of Merleau-Ponty's "maximum grip." Does it mean that "motor knowledge" or "maximum grip" in music is outside the realm of musicality?I have attempted to follow the authors' logic in answering the question: What is learning of music? The authors postulate that "knowledge does not always, and not in any way automatically, become exactly the same as the learning situation aimed for" and that "the aim of music education is to produce music knowledge." These propositions lead me to believe that the learning of music occurs in experiencing all types of musical activities, regardless of the musician's level of proficiency. In all types of musical activities, including different performances of the same repertoire by the same performer, the musician would find new knowledge that is being produced in his/her body. Therefore, I agree with the authors in that "bodily experience is the foundation for learning."I would like to respond to the issue of whether music learning occurs within [End Page 206] or outside of the human being. I enjoy reading how the authors borrow Merleau-Ponty's analogy of the blind man and his stick. They put it so beautifully that "the piano becomes an extension of the pianist's body, and the pianist can 'feel' its limitation." This leads me to ponder if there could be further extensions beyond the physical piano. We know that pianists make the strings in the piano vibrate through a lever mechanism. These vibrations travel through the air and arrive at the audience's ears. Then the vibrating energies are transmitted as electrical energies in the audience's nerve cells. The audience in turn may behave differently after such a complex transmission of energies at a performance. My question is: Is there an end to the "extension" of a musician's body? If so, where should it end? There is no doubt that the pianist relates to the world and learns about the world through the piano. Could the pianist learn about the world through the vibrations that the piano strings generate, through the air, and through the audience's hearing mechanism, brain cells, and behaviors? Is this what the authors meant by "the human ego is boundaryless and cannot be localized, and the ego is immanent in the whole system"? Regardless of how far the "extension" goes, how do we know if an "extension" has occurred? How can we validate an "extension" of a musician's ego"?It seems to me that the authors' discussions have focused on the tactile extension of the body. If the body can be extended like the stick for the blind man, would the air surrounding the blind man, including its smell, temperature, humidity, wind, and sound, be his extension too? When this question is transferred to a musician, would the total context of the musical event be the musician's extension of the body too? By "total context," I mean the cultural context, the environment (smell, temperature,...), and the people in the musical event.We are certain that music learning takes place when experiences and knowledge are incorporated in the body. We still have not solved the problem of whether music learning occurs within or outside of the human being, because the boundary of the... (shrink)

These brief selections could use explanatory footnotes for frequently obscure passages. --E. S. C.

The philosophical problem of the relation of symbol to truth is far from solved, but there have been significant advances toward its solution. It is the common Christian understanding that God is Truth , and that all truths must ultimately find union in him. This is to say that all genuine truths must be compatible. The true conclusions of genuine science must be compatible with the true conclusions of genuine theology. Or, to bring this general statement to a more particular (...) level, the true conclusions of Biblical scholarship must be compatible with the true conclusions of the natural sciences. When this compatibility is lacking, and it so often is, we must assume that the conclusions of one field of truth-seeking or the other do not partake of the Truth which is God. And there is no guarantee that theology as a field of truth-seeking cannot err. Another characteristic of genuine truth is that it is not dependent upon any particular environment or milieu —either social, cultural, philosophical, or even theological. Unless we are to make the common but dangerous division of sacred and secular, of holy and profane, claim that these areas of human experience have nothing to do the one with the other, compartmentalise our thought, and ask, ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’, it must be concluded that there is no one specifically Christian milieu . Genuine truths must be true at all times, in all places, and for all men. But since we are not gods, we must hold these truths in what St Paul called earthen vessels , vessels shaped and moulded by our particular milieu. (shrink)

Peter C. Hodgson provides a new translation of Hegel's 1829 lectures on the proofs of the existence of God, based on the definitive German edition. Coming late in his career, these lectures give us the great philosopher's final and most seasoned thinking on a topic of obvious significance to him, that of the reality status of God and ways of knowing God.

The Battle of Drepana in 249 b.c. marks the most significant defeat of Roman naval forces at the hands of their Carthaginian opponents during the First Punic War. Attempting to take the Punic fleet in the harbour of Drepana by surprise, the consul P. Claudius Pulcher sailed with his ships from Lilybaeum about midnight, and reached Drepana at dawn. Yet, owing to swift and level-headed counter-measures taken by the Punic commander, Adherbal, the unfolding fight – partly in the harbour, mostly (...) off the shore – turned into a fiasco for the Romans. The consul got away; he returned to Rome, where the Senate instructed him to appoint a dictator. How soon he returned, and by what route, is the question. (shrink)

Curio’s six lictors with laureled fasces (Cic. Att. 10.4.9) are best explained by his holding command in 49 BC not as Caesar’s legatus, but pro praetore with imperium nominally in his own right, granted (‘extra-constitutionally’) by Caesar directly, without vote of Senate and People.

On October 31, 1994, it was announced that a confidential settlement had been reached in Doe v. Kohn, Nast & Graf, P.C., et al., 862F. Supp. 1310 ). The settlement in ths widely publicized AIDS discrimination case came three weeks after the trial began in the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Nov. 2, 1994, at 10).Plaintiff Doe, an associate employed at Kohn, Nast & Graf, a prominent law firm in Philadelphia, filed an AIDS discrimination case under the (...) Americans with Disabilities Act against his employer claiming that the firm fired him in March 1993 because he was HIV-positive. Doe's complaint also cited claims under ERISA and other Pennsylvania employment laws. (shrink)