The purpose of this work is to find out how different library classification systems and linguistic ontologies arrange a particular domain of interest and what are the limitations for information retrieval. We use knowledge representation techniques and languages for construction of a domain specific ontology. This ontology would help not only in problem solving, but it would demonstrate the ease with which complex queries can be handled using principles of domain ontology, thereby facilitating better information retrieval. Facet-based methodology has been (...) used for ontology formalization for quite some time. Ontology formalization involves different steps such as, Identification of the terminology, Analysis, Synthesis, Standardization and Ordering. Firstly, for purposes of conceptualization OntoUML has been used which is a well-founded and established language for Ontology driven Conceptual Modelling. Phase transformation of “the same mode” has been subsequently obtained by OWL-DL using Protégé software. The final OWL ontology contains a total of around 232 axioms. These axioms comprise 148 logical axioms, 76 declaration axioms and 43 classes. These axioms glue together classes, properties and data types as well as a constraint. Such data clustering cannot be achieved through general use of simple classification schemes. Hence it has been observed and established that domain ontology using faceted principles provide better information retrieval with enhanced precision. This ontology should be seen not only as an alternative of the existing classification system but as a Knowledge Base system which can handle complex queries well, which is the ultimate purpose of any classification system or indexing system. In this paper, we try to understand how ontology-based information retrieval systems can prove its utility as a useful tool in the field of library science with a particular focus on the education domain. (shrink)

Now acknowledged as a classic in the philosophy of science, A Realist Theory of Science is one of the very few books to transform not only our understanding of science, but that of the nature of the world it studies. The book has inspired the multi-disciplinary and international movement of thought known as critical realism. Re-issued with a new introduction.

Since its original publication in 1979, The Possibility of Naturalism has been one of the most influential works in contemporary philosophy of science and social science. It is one of the cornerstones of the critical realist position, which is now widely seen as offering perhaps the only viable alternative to positivism and post positivism. This fourth edition contains a new foreword from Mervyn Hartwig, who is founding editor of the Journal of Critical Realism and editor and principal author of the (...) Dictionary of Critical Realism. (shrink)

A co-authored article with Roy T. Cook forthcoming in a special edition on the Caesar Problem of the journal Dialectica. We argue against the appeal to equivalence classes in resolving the Caesar Problem.

You face two buttons. Pushing one will destroy Greensboro. Pushing the other will save it. There is no way for you to know which button saves and which destroys. What ought you to do? Answer: You ought to make the correct guess and push the button that saves Greensboro. Second question: Do you have an obligation to push the correct button?

This paper reconstructs the function argument of Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics 2.1. The argument seeks to define happiness through the method of division; shows that the highest good is better than all four of the goods of the soul, not only two, as commentators have thought; and unlike the Nicomachean argument, makes the highest good definitionally independent of the human function.

Jacques Ellul, by far the most significant author in the serious discussions on the interface between religion and technology, is apparently not known to the science‐and‐religion field. The reason is the imprecise use of the terminology. In scientific formulation the relationship can be summarized as technology /religion:: science/theology. The first pair are robust three‐dimensional templates of most human experience; the second pair are linear, abstract concerns of a minority of citizens. In the parallel community—now well developed throughout academia—of science, technology, (...) and society, where the technology/religion matters have been discussed more than the science/religion pair, John Caiazza's point that “techno‐secularism is the real problem” has been front and center for some decades. Among the theologians most aware of this, Raimundo Panikkar, Langdon Gilkey, and Huston Smith, Smith is the one who has taken the case much further than Caiazza, recognizing the danger of the real theological challenge from the religion of scientism and actively working against it. I write from a unique background among those involved in this debate—that of being deeply embedded simultaneously both in the modern science and technology establishment and in the reform of the religious enterprise for fifty years. I make the case that matters are worse than even Smith posits. He shows that scientism as a fundamentalist modern secularism serves the exact function of the theology behind the practiced religion of America and the West, that is, technology. An unexpected ray of hope has appeared in the sudden emergence of whole‐person healing (also known as complementary and alternative medicine), which is used regularly by well over half the population. This reintroduction of the spiritual dimension into this key technology of health will certainly be a major turning point. (shrink)

Philosophy and Contemporary Issues contains contemporary readings of philosophical significance designed to introduce philosophy to college and university students. The authors' goal is to demonstrate how philosophy illuminates and helps solve some of the important problems facing contemporary man. This edition contains additional readings.

Philosophical defenders of animal liberation believe that we have direct duties to animals. Typically a presumption of that belief is that animals have the capacity to experience pain and suffering. Notoriously, however, a strand of Western scientific and philosophical thought has held animals to be incapable of experiencing pain, and even today one frequently encounters in discussions of animal liberation expressions of scepticism about whether animals really experience pain. -/- The Analogical Argument for Animal Pain responds to this scepticism by (...) claiming that it is just as reasonable for me to believe that animals feel pain, given my only evidence for this is shared behaviour and physiology, as it is for me to believe that other humans feel pain on the basis of similar evidence. In this paper I expound and defend this Argument. (shrink)

Science and religion are incommensurable: one cannot use centimeters to measure volume. Science's proper cognate is theology. Science and theology are human activities that are basically conceptual (partly fallible) frameworks for explaining experience. Religion and technology, by contrast, involve and control or limit human practice and experience: they involve “sensate” reality—people and things. The study of the interaction of these four terms (or any two) must use the terms more precisely.Science as practiced today has become scientism, another theology. Technology is, (...) without any doubt, the world's most powerful and fastest growing religion.Minor squabbles among theologies, including science, must continue, but it is the tensions between technology and the established religions that will define this century. Battles on three fronts are already clear: the environment, globalization, and economic gaps. But whole–person healing, the replacement for high–tech reductionist modern medicine, is the most significant, because it will undermine science, which has hitched its wagon to this falling star.The end of fundamental science is upon us, because it has been so successful. Science will be increasingly applications–driven, and it will be judged by results. Here, it has met its nemesis in wholeperson healing that incorporates integrative medicine. Scientists must now reconsider their role in society. It will not be easy to accept a humbler position. Moreover, the vague allusions to spirituality by scientists need a more authentic commitment to praxis in lifestyle. (shrink)

THE PURPOSE OF THIS ARTICLE IS TO SHOW HOW HUME’S SCEPTICISM ABOUT MIRACLES GENERATES "EPISTEMOLOGICAL" SCEPTICISM ABOUT TIME TRAVEL. SO THE PRIMARY QUESTION RAISED HERE IS "CAN ONE KNOW THAT TIME TRAVEL HAS OCCURED?" RATHER THAN "CAN TIME TRAVEL OCCUR?" I ARGUE THAT ATTEMPTS TO SHOW THE EXISTENCE OF TIME TRAVEL WOULD FACE THE SAME METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS AS THE ONES CONFRONTING ATTEMPTS TO DEMONSTRATE THE EXISTENCE OF PARANORMAL EVENTS. SINCE HUMEAN SCEPTICISM EXTENDS TO THE STUDY OF PARANORMAL EVENTS (PARAPSYCHOLOGY), HUMEANS (...) ARE COMMITTED TO SCEPTICISM ABOUT THE STUDY OF TIME TRAVEL ("PARAHISTORY"). (shrink)

Glowacki's work meshes well with our view of human nature as having evolved to use culture to improve survival and reproduction. Peace is a cultural achievement, requiring advances in social organization and control, including leaders who can implement policies to benefit the group, third-party mediation, and intergroup cooperation. Cultural advances shift intergroup interactions from negative-sum (war) to positive-sum (trade).

Coleridge rarely mentions Hegel in his philosophical writings and seems to have read very little of Hegel's work. Yet I argue that Coleridge's criticisms of Schelling's philosophy—as recorded in letters and marginalia—betray remarkable intellectual affinities with his nearly exact contemporary Hegel, particularly in their shared doubts about Schelling's foundationalist intuitionism. With this background in place, I seek to demonstrate that volume one of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria is a radically self-undermining text: its philosophical argument, far from slavishly recapitulating Schelling's philosophy, remains (...) haunted by a quasi-Hegelian skepticism toward intuition even as it advances intuition as the foundation of its theoretical edifice. (shrink)

An exploration of the broad parameters of the post-nation-state sociology which is called for by a powerful and inter-related set of political, economic and cultural factors which are extending globalisation. In this context, theoretical and methodological innovation is to be preferred to the problematic application of older models such as those provided by Hegelian Marxism or Weberianism. Some arguments against the cosmopolitan thesis and risk society thinking are explored, as is the relation between risk society and cosmopolitanism.

The Indian philosophy of warfare remains terra incognita. Most Western commentators emphasize the underdeveloped nature of military theory in ancient India, while two American political scientists...

If a spinning sphere casts a shadow, does the shadow also spin? This riddle is the point of departure for an investigation into the nature of shadow movement. A general theory of motion will encompass all moving things, not just physical objects. Ultimately, I argue that round shadows do indeed spin. Shadows are followers of the objects that cast them. Parts of the shadow correspond to parts of the leader, so motion of the caster's parts accounts for motions of the (...) shadow's parts. I conclude with a discussion of how the dynamic aspects of shadows impose subtle constraints on other puzzles about shadows. (shrink)

In this paper I study intentions of the form, that is, intentions with a we-content, and their role in interpersonal coordination. I focus on the notion of epistemic support for such intentions. Using tools from epistemic game theory and epistemic logic, I cast doubt on whether such support guarantees the other agents' conditional mediation in the achievement of such intentions, something that appears important if intentions with a we-content are to count as genuine intentions. I then formulate a stronger version (...) of epistemic support, one that does indeed ensure the required mediation, but I then argue that it rests on excessively strong informational conditions. In view of this I provide an alternative set of conditions that are jointly sufficient for coordination in games, and I argue that these conditions constitute a plausible alternative to the proposed notion of epistemic support. (shrink)

Strange is our situation here upon the earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose.1.

This essay sets forth the decisive notions and postulates of process philosophy in Process Philosophy and Social Thought, edited by John B. Cobb, Jr. and W. Widick Schroeder. After commenting on the circumstances in which process philosophy came to be a major option among philosophical theologians, I provide some amplification of those notions and postulates. Then, selecting material from the eighteen articles in the volume, I offer several critical assessments of the process viewpoint and its relation to science and to (...) the contemporary call for liberation. (shrink)

It is a great privilege to have been invited to speak on this occasion. I shall not talk about Janet Semple's life, since I did not know Janet Semple well. I first came across her work when the Oxford University Press sent me a copy of her Ph.D. thesis, asking for my opinion as to its publishability. I groaned—yet another study of the panopticon! I opened it, started reading—and read it straight through. It was so clear, insightful, powerful in its (...) interpretation and beautifully written. I am delighted to see that it has appeared as Bentham's Prison. I was, at a later stage, equally pleased to be involved in persuading Janet to publish some of her research on Bentham's medical and health interests. I shall not try to evaluate her work today. I think I might best honour her by trying to reflect upon some of the wider issues that surround Bentham's concerns with prisons and hospitals—issues raised by her work. (shrink)

Only there occur certain lags in scholarship which need to be remedied. One of these is the lack of appreciation of the efforts of the American critical realists to attain a direct, referential realism which would avoid the difficulties confronting an intuitional type of naive realism and the well-recognized dilemma of Lockean representative perceptionism. In the latter case, the puzzle is, of course, that, if we perceive subjective ideas, how can we know that they give us cognitive access to external (...) things. (shrink)