Safeguarding public interest was vital to early modern state legitimacy in Western Europe and East Asia. Wenkai He identifies similar patterns in state-society interactions surrounding public goods provision and explores how conflicts over public interest led to calls for fundamental political change and to modern representative politics.

To better detect fish in an aquaculture environment, a high-accuracy real-time detection model is proposed. An experimental dataset was collected for fish detection in laboratory aquaculture environments using remotely operated vehicles. To overcome the inaccuracy of the You Only Look Once v3 algorithm in underwater farming environment, a suitable set of hyperparameters was obtained through multiple sets of experiments. Then, a real-time image recovery algorithm is applied before YOLOv3 to reduce the effects of both noise and light on images whilst (...) keeping the real-time capability, leading to a mean average precision of 0.85 and frame rate of 17.6 fps, respectively. Finally, compared with the base detection model using only the YOLOv3 algorithm, the enhanced detection model presented results in a reduction of miss detection rate from 23% to only 9% across different environments and with the detection accuracy of the target in different environments being improved from 8% to 37%. (shrink)

Analytical study of 'Pramāṇa' in Mīmāṃsā philosophy in the light of Śāstradīpikā by Pārthasārathimiśra, active 11th century.

Analytical study of logic (Pramāṇa) in Mimamsa school of Hindu philosophy; includes text of Mīmāṃsāsūtra of Jaimini.

In this thesis, I present an account of the development of early Greek epistemology, according to which Protagoras' measure doctrine, and his argument from conflicting appearances, was the starting point for work on perception and knowledge by Plato in the Theaetetus, Aristotle in Metaphysics IV and Democritus. In Chapter One, I argue against the assumption that Protagoras' Aletheia contained a philosophical theory. It was probably not a treatise, but a virtuoso show-piece, with the aim of "knocking down" views according to (...) which truth is only known by gods, and, with difficulty, by privileged humans--namely, philosophers. For this, it need not have contained more than some well-chosen examples of perceptual and value beliefs, and arguments that one cannot decide which are true. In Chapter Two, I argue that Democritus should be seen as Protagoras' heir. Democritus argued Protagoras' general claim is self-refuting, but thought he was right about perceptual appearances. In Confirmations, he defended the senses, attributing to them knowledge and "power of proof." However, his theory led to an ancestor of the primary/secondary quality distinction, and this threatened to undermine the theory itself because of implications--that one can only know how things appear and not how things are by nature--which were later taken up in Pyrrhonist skepticism. In Chapter Three, I present a reading of the Secret Doctrine in Plato's Theaetetus as a defense and diagnosis of Protagoras' claim, in particular, an explanation of the global relativization which Protagoras' claim seems to recommend. This reading is meant to avoid the well-known difficulties concerning the prevailing interpretation of Protagoras' "Secret Doctrine" as a flux doctrine. I also argue that Plato developed the Secret Doctrine with Democritus in mind. In Chapter Four, I argue that Plato's "self-refutation argument" is aimed at relativism, but not relativism about truth. The latter, which Aristotle dismisses as eristical, is a position Protagoras can take, but Plato's argument works against it as well. In Chapter Five, I examine why Aristotle seems to treat Protagoras in Metaphysics IV as being committed to a denial of the principle of non-contradiction. (shrink)

With the rapid development of the Internet, recommendation systems have received widespread attention as an effective way to solve information overload. Social tagging technology can both reflect users’ interests and describe the characteristics of the items themselves, making group recommendation thus becoming a recommendation technology in urgent demand nowadays. In traditional tag-based recommendation systems, the general processing method is to calculate the similarity and then rank the recommended items according to the similarity. Without considering the influence of continuous user behavior, (...) in this article, we propose a personalized recommendation algorithm based on social tags by combining the ideas of Markov chain and collaborative filtering. This algorithm splits the three-dimensional relationship of into two two-dimensional relationships of and. The user’s interest degree to the tags is calculated by the Markov chain model, and then the items corresponding to them are matched by the recommended tag set. The influence between tags is used to model the satisfaction of items based on the correlation between the tags contained in the matched items, and collaborative filtering is used to complete the sparse values when calculating the interest and satisfaction between user–tags and user–items to improve the accuracy of recommendations. The experiments show that in the publicly available dataset, the personalized recommendation algorithm proposed in this article has significantly improved in accuracy and recall rate compared with the existing algorithms. (shrink)

The article discusses the priority of belonging to a particular community and identification with it. The authors believe that among the entire set of communities, membership in political groups should be a priority, and their membership in state political communities should be higher than territorial, ethnic, religious, linguistic and other differences. However, the devotion of religious believers to an international religious community that does not know official state borders can exceed their devotion to the state as the main political institution. (...) Consequently, they can become a centrifugal force that threatens the solidarity of political unity. The authors define this conflict as the “believer-citizen” dilemma, which poses serious challenges in the field of nation building in China. Based on the concept of related identities, the article analyzes and explains the existing dilemma “believer – citizen” from the position of simultaneous inclusion in various social groups. The authors suggest that such an approach, involving the analysis of membership in several social groups, is useful for constructing solutions to this dilemma. In conclusion, the authors conclude that religion has many opportunities for the upbringing of civic virtues. Ethical principles such as kindness, tolerance, and empathy are widespread in various religions, and they have indeed become universally recognized human virtues. In this sense, believers can also be good citizens and at the same time fulfill their religious and civic duties, which will not contradict each other. For religious fundamentalists, on the other hand, an extreme form of religious identity can undermine their social life. How to create institutions based on honesty and justice, how to build reliable and correct strategies for constructing identities in order to promote self-identification from citizenships and reduce identification based on extreme religious movements, as well as how to use religious identity to create a civic identity on its basis – these are the biggest problems in state building. (shrink)

On the concept of Mokṣa in Indic philosophy.

Study on the Mimamsa school, as expounded by Jaimini, in Hindu philosophy.

Festschrift honoring Maṇḍana Miśra, b. 1929, Sanskrit philosopher; comprises articles chiefly on Mīmāṃsā school in Hindu philosophy.

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume 60, Issue 2, Page 304-319, June 2022.

Suhrawardī, Yaḥyá ibn Ḥabash, 1152 or 1153-1191 -Criticism and interpretation ; Bābā Afz̤al, active 13th century -Criticism and interpretation ; ʻAṭṭār, Farīd al-Dīn, d. ca. 1230 -Criticism and interpretation.

On the life and works of Maṇḍanamiśra, ancient Hindu philosopher.

This is the first book to bring together Western and Chinese perspectives on both moral and intellectual virtues. Editors Chienkuo Mi, Michael Slote, and Ernest Sosa have assembled some of the world’s leading epistemologists and ethicists—located in the U.S., Europe, and Asia—to explore in a global context what they are calling, "the virtue turn." The 15 chapters have never been published previously and by covering topics that bridge epistemology and moral philosophy suggest a widespread philosophical turn away from Kantian and (...) Utilitarian issues and towards character- and agent-based concerns. A goal of this volume is to show students and researchers alike that the turn toward virtue underway in the Western tradition is being followed by a similar turn toward virtue in Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

Relativism, the position that things are for each as they seem to each, was first formulated in Western philosophy by Protagoras, the 5th century BC Greek orator and teacher. This book focuses on the challenge to the possibility of expert knowledge posed by Protagoras, together with responses by the three most important philosophers of the next generation, Plato, Aristotle, and Democritus. In his book Truth, Protagoras made vivid use of two provocative but imperfectly spelled out ideas. First, that everyone is (...) a ‘measure’ of the truth, and that everyone is already capable of determining how things are, since the senses are the best and most credible guides to the truth. Second, given that things appear differently to different people, there is no basis on which to decide that one appearance is true rather than the other. Plato developed these ideas into a more fully worked-out theory, which he then subjected to refutation in the Theaetetus. Aristotle argued that Protagoras’ ideas lead to skepticism in Metaphysics Book G, a chapter which reflects awareness of Plato’s reaction in the Theaetetus. Finally, Democritus incorporated modified Protagorean ideas and arguments into his theory of knowledge and perception. There have been many important recent studies of these thinkers in isolation. However, there has been no attempt to tell a single, coherent story about how Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle responded to Protagoras’ striking claim, and to its perceived implications about knowledge, perception, and truth. This book offers a new account of this important chapter in the development of Greek epistemology. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

Research papers on the fundamentals of Indic philosophy and culture.

Abstracts of the theses on scientific methodology; papers presented in un-known conference (s).

يبحث كتاب محمد المصباحي الذات في الفكر العربي الإسلامي في صور الذات الفلسفية والصوفية، الفردية والتاريخية، الأنطولوجية والعمرانية؛ وفي جملة مفاهيم وقضايا متصلة بمفهوم الذات، كالعقل والحق والعدل والدين والوجود والماهية. يتألف هذا الكتاب، الصادر عن المركز العربي للأبحاث ودراسة السياسات من 16 فصلًا. وإشكاليته الأساس هي: هل كانت هذه الذات التي تتكلم عنها الفلسفة العربية الإسلامية تشير حقًا إلى الهوية الفردية "الأنا" أم إلى الماهيّة العامة "الإنسان بما هو إنسان"؟ وما العلاقة التي تنسجها هذه الذات مع مفاهيم متقابلة، مثل (...) الماهيّة والجوهر والنفس والعقل والأنا والهوية والوجود؟ وما صلتها بالجسم المُغري بأحاسيسه وأهوائه وانفعالاته وقواه وغرائزه الجامحة، وبالذات المطلقة الجاذبة بكمالها التام وبهائها الغامر؟. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 295-310, April 2022.

In this essay I examine the role that reflection plays in knowledge. I argue that a notion of reflection grounded in ancient Chinese philosophy can help us understand second-order or reflective knowledge in both the accounts of Confucius and Ernest Sosa. I also argue that reflection can help us understand the most ideal kind of knowledge. I begin my paper by laying out Confucius’ and Sosa’s accounts of knowledge, while at the same time drawing the reader’s attention to their common (...) concern with reflective knowledge. Next I draw on an account of reflection from Confucius and elaborate on it. With this account of reflection in hand, I return to Confucius’ and Sosa’s accounts of knowledge and show how this account of reflection can help those accounts of knowledge. (shrink)