Computer simulation and thought experiments seem to produce knowledge about the world without intervening in the world. This has called for a comparison between the two methods. However, Chandrasekharan et al. argue that the nature of contemporary science is too complex for using TEs. They suggest CS as the tool for contemporary sciences and conclude that it will replace TEs. In this paper, by discussing a few TEs from the history of science, I show that the replacement thesis about TE (...) is a failure. The paper is divided into three sections. The first section discusses the arguments of Chandrasekharan et al. and demonstrates the three distinct aspects of the replacement thesis. The second section examines the argument against TE and shows that they are inadequate to prove the withering of TE from science. The third section discusses Albert Einstein’s Magnet and Conductor TE and demonstrates that replacing such TE with CS yield no advantage. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a new conception of religious justifications which takes the performance of miracles as the paradigm of reasoning in religion. The paper has two parts: In the first part, I argue against Swinburne’s parity argument for the existence of God by showing that religious perceptions fit more comfortably among aspect perceptions, e.g., the perceptions of beauty and courage, than among our perceptions of objects and colors. In the second part of the paper I employ the (...) analogy between seeing God and seeing beauty and the moral features of an act to propose a performative and transformative conception of religious reasoning. I argue that an argument in religion is a performance which brings various facts or events into life in a particular manner, so that God may be seen in or through them. Any such performance through which God is seen may be properly called a "miracle". Thus, the performance of miracles, i.e., of acts that are directed at becoming the vehicles throu. (shrink)

With reference to significance of number nine in the musical compositions of Carnatic music of India; a study.

With reference to significance of number nine in the musical compositions of Carnatic music of India; a study.

This paper is concerned with the centrality of aspect seeing in Wittgenstein's philosophy, with some analogies between religious beliefs and aspect seeing, and with the implications of these analogies for the question of the justification of religious beliefs. If belief in God is neither a hypothesis nor a regular perceptual belief but rather a type of aspect seeing, then the kinds of proofs and justifications that are applicable to it would have to engage the non-believer in a manner that would (...) help her experience the dawning of a new aspect. This is why the standard philosophical proofs for theism, even when accepted as valid, are likely to be unsuccessful in bringing about faith. (shrink)

The expectation of a "new heaven and new earth" has by and large suppressed the attention of Christian thought to the fate of this heaven and this earth. Our world, perishable, sinful, and a vale of unrelievable sorrow and illusory pleasures, cannot attract one who is wholly absorbed in Eternity. Such is the unflagging belief of Christian consciousness with which the countless zealots of the spiritual life went off to monasteries and into the desert to pray.

I remember a conversation that took place twenty years ago in one of the rooms of the Institute of the History of the Natural Sciences and Technology of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Advaita vedanta a great tradition in metaphysical-Religious thought offers connected solutions of important logico-Epistemological and ethico-Religious problems. Its key concept is atman defined as pure awareness and identified with ultimate spiritual reality brahman. Metaphysically atman is light of awareness constituting core of experience. Ideal investigator as also religious saint approximates to the state of pure spectator or detached observer. Vedanta upholds ideal of jivanmukti making spiritual fulfillment amenable to verification and control in terms of actual lived experience.

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has created ethical challenges for intensive care unit (ICU) professionals, potentially causing moral distress. This study explored the levels and causes of moral distress and the ethical climate in Dutch ICUs during COVID-19.MethodsAn extended version of the Measurement of Moral Distress for Healthcare Professionals (MMD-HP) and Ethical Decision Making Climate Questionnaire (EDMCQ) were online distributed among all 84 ICUs. Moral distress scores in nurses and intensivists were compared with the historical control group one year before COVID-19. ResultsThree (...) hundred forty-five nurses (70.7%), 40 intensivists (8.2%), and 103 supporting staff (21.1%) completed the survey. Moral distress levels were higher for nurses than supporting staff. Moral distress levels in intensivists did not differ significantly from those of nurses and supporting staff. “Inadequate emotional support for patients and their families” was the highest-ranked cause of moral distress for all groups of professionals. Of all factors, all professions rated the ethical climate most positively regarding the culture of mutual respect, ethical awareness and support. “Culture of not avoiding end-of-life-decisions” and “Self-reflective and empowering leadership” received the lowest mean scores. Moral distress scores during COVID-19 were significantly lower for ICU nurses (p < 0.001) and intensivists (p < 0.05) compared to one year prior.ConclusionLevels and causes of moral distress vary between ICU professionals and differ from the historical control group. Targeted interventions that address moral distress during a crisis are desirable to improve the mental health and retention of ICU professionals and the quality of patient care. (shrink)

In this book an attempt is made to represent the Theravada in its faithful form. This work is purely altruistic. It is for the reader and for the scholar to justify how far this position is desensible in the course of the lecturer in this book. In India, Pali Abhidhamma is as yet a scaled book and hence we have done a splendid work in the cause of knowledge and philosophy.

The Russian poet and anthroposophist Andrei Belyi has four poems from 1918 with the same title, Anthroposophy [Antroposofiia]. These are love poems and anthroposophy is represented in them as a living spiritual being of female gender. The principal attribute of this being is a "clear gaze," "flashing eyes," which regard the poet from the precincts of light, of blueness, from waves of aromas and musical harmonies. These verses are clearly oriented to the poem "Three Encounters" [Tri vstrechi] by Vladimir Solov'ev, (...) the theme of which is the thrice-repeated vision of what Solov'ev recognized as the Sophia of the ancient Gnostics and of Jakob Böhme. How are we to understand Belyi's enigmatic poetic intent? How does anthroposophy—a "science of the spirit," an occult system created by Rudolf Steiner—become in Belyi's imagination now a "sister," now a beloved—"tender, gentle, and kind"—linked to the poet by a mysterious and fateful meeting in eternity? Most importantly, what does this anthropomorphism of anthroposophy mean? The suggestion that these verses may have had real prototypes poems does not eliminate the question. But the question is resolved if we turn to a very well-known and in certain respects key lecture by Steiner entitled "The Essence of Anthroposophy," which he gave in Berlin in February 1913, and which Andrei Belyi attended. This lecture not only provides the key to those of Belyi's poems of interest to us here; it also brings us directly to the theme of our present study, inasmuch as its content creates a bridge between Russian religious culture of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, developing under the aegis of Sophia, and the latest German gnosis. It is therefore worth dwelling on it especially. (shrink)

Thinkers in the twentieth century in the West arrived by various routes at the idea of certain correspondences between being and language—an idea that was impossible in epochs when the link with classical philosophy was still alive. M. Heidegger's statement about language as "the house of being "could serve as a motto for systems of that kind. In Russian thought mainly of the first two decades of the twentieth century, there are deep and philosophically elegant conceptions that make the same (...) point as Heidegger's thesis—the beingness of language. Language is rooted in objective being and the nature of the word transcends human limitations and partakes of the sphere of objective spirit. We shall examine a number of theories of Russian philosophers in whom philology appears as a unique kind of ontology. Thus, in P. Florenskii the philosophy of language is, at one point, a doctrine of Naturphilosophie and, at another point, a semi-occult doctrine; in A. Losev the dialectic of the name turns into a cosmology and cosmogony as well as into a gnostic theology. A number of important twentieth-century Russian thinkers regarded the word as the central focus of their views. Apparently, this is an essential feature of philosophy in the twentieth century. (shrink)

Man is a mystery. It must be unraveled and if you spend your whole life unraveling it, do not say that this was a waste of time; I am preoccupied with this mystery because I want to be a human being.

Thought experiments are one among the oldest and effectively employed tools of scientific reasoning. Hacking (Philos Sci 2:302–308, 1992) argues that thought experiments in contrast to real experiments do not have a life of their own. In this paper, I attempt to show that contrary to Hacking’s contentions, thought experiments do have a life of their own. The paper is divided into three main sections. In the first section, I review the reasons that Hacking sets out for believing in the (...) life of experiments. Second section discusses Hacking’s characterization of thought experiments. The section also reviews his arguments for denying a life to thought experiments. In the third section, I argue for a life of thought experiments. In this section, I discuss the historical evolution of the EPR thought experiment and Galileo’s Free Falling Bodies in detail to show the untenability of Hacking’s arguments. The third section is followed by a conclusion that thought experiments do have a life of their own. (shrink)

A collection of readings which provides managers and students with a compilation of articles illustrating the application of operations research to aid in managerial decision making.

The establishment of the Campanian nation.Carthaginian expedition to Sicily.. Insigni magnis rebus anno additur nihil turn ad rem Romanam pertinere visum, quod Carthaginienses, tanti hostes futuri, turn primum per seditiones Siculorum ad partis alterius auxilium in Sicilian! exercitum traiecere.

We would like to thank an anonymous referee for his helpful comments on a previous version of this paper.