This chapter introduces the subject of personhood and its significance to Indic traditions and academic discourses. The category of 'person' is distinguished from the categories of 'self' and 'body' by virtue of its relational, permeable, and "extensional" or "expansive" character. The scholarly tendency to frame persons as "microcosms"-bodies that contain within the replication of the cosmos-at-large-is problematized. Indic persons are most often conceived as outward-facing, phenomenalistic, world-wide entities. Chapters of the work are summarized. Significance of Indic theories of personhood to (...) modern debates on environmental personhood and legal personhood is discussed. (shrink)

All parts of Heraclitus’ cosmos are simultaneously living and dying. Its constituent stuffs (“biomasses”) cycle endlessly through physical changes in sweeping patterns (“biorhythms”) that are reflected in the dynamic rhythms of Heraclitus’ own thought and language. These natural processes are best examined at a more-than-human level that exceeds individuation, stable identity, rational comprehension, and linguistic capture. B62 (“mortals immortals”), one of Heraclitus’ most perplexing fragments, models these processes in a spectacular fashion: it describes the imbrication not only of humans and (...) gods but of cosmic masses more generally, and its language mimics the natural relations that it names, or rather intimates through its grammatical and syntactical indeterminacy. The remaining fragments amplify the uncertainties and the exhilarations of Heraclitus’ worldview along the same lines. His approach to nature raises urgent questions about how human beings fit into the cosmos, not least by challenging our intuitive conceptions of life and death, our material makeup, and our entanglements with our natural surroundings. In doing so, he provides vital lessons for contemporary ecological awareness, and proves to be an unexpected ally. (shrink)

This article proposes a theological emphasis to the definition of προσλαμβάνω in Romans 14–15. Previous accounts have emphasised the domestic and social implication of Paul's imperative—‘welcome one another’ (Rom. 15:7a). The result has been that what Paul might have meant by God's and Christ's ‘welcome’ (Rom. 14:3 and 15:7b) has been governed by the ethical imperative. In order to investigate the ‘welcome’ of God and Christ, this article proposes a context of three important Septuagintal antecedents as yet unconsidered: 1 Samuel (...) 12, Psalm 18, and Psalm 65: In this context, God's and Christ's ‘welcome’ in Rom. 14–15 incorporates notions of justification, election, salvation, and unified worship. A theological reading of προσλαμβάνω, using these intertextual resources, therefore provides a stronger position from which to understand Paul's imperative—‘welcome one another’. (shrink)

The research analyzes the process of formation of the ethics committee as a new institution in the system of regulation of genetic research. The external factors of this process are the increasing digitalization of medical and research practices, as well as the special situation that is developing in the field of genomic research and the use of genetic technologies, where issues of philosophy, jurisprudence and administration have generated many fundamentally new, and sometimes unexpected contexts. The author shows the similarity and (...) difference of approaches to the inclusion of the ethics committee in the national regulatory systems of different countries and determines the prospects for further integration of the new institution into normative and administrative-regulatory and law enforcement practices. The research applies all the main methods of system analysis and structural and functional analysis, as well as the comparative legal method. At the stage of generalization of empirical material, the author turns to the means and methods of philosophical phenomenology and phenomenological sociology. The study revealed that the ethics committee may have different institutional and regulatory functions in a variety of management and legal systems. Being hybrid in nature, the ethics committee performs various functions, and in various state legal systems and traditions it can combine elements of legislative, executive and judicial power. At times, the ethics committee may go beyond the scope of both a purely administrative and exclusively legal regulator. All this indicates that the integration of this institution into the legal system and into a variety of social practices is far from being completed. (shrink)

It is argued that the legacy of the Vienna Circle played a very important role in the intellectual quest of modern philosophy. No matter how the concept of logical positivism is buried by “continental philosophy”, or ideologically motivated philosophers, or even the latest initiatives of the contemporary philosophy of science, the scientific worldview remains invariant. The traditions of the work of logical positivists remain relevant both for the development of modern philosophy of science and as guidelines indicating the way to (...) get rid of the idle talk (“meaninglessness”) of political slogans and manifestos. (shrink)

We present PhrasIS, a benchmark dataset composed of natural occurring Phrase pairs with Inference and Similarity annotations for the evaluation of semantic representations. The described dataset fills the gap between word and sentence-level datasets, allowing to evaluate compositional models at a finer granularity than sentences. Contrary to other datasets, the phrase pairs are extracted from naturally occurring text in image captions and news headlines. All the text fragments have been annotated by experts following a rigorous process also described in the (...) manuscript achieving high inter annotator agreement. In this work we analyse the dataset, showing the relation between inference labels and similarity scores. With 10K phrase pairs split in development and test, the dataset is an excellent benchmark for testing meaning representation systems. (shrink)

A straight solution to S. Kripke’s skeptical problem, proposed by E.V. Borisov, is considered. The main assumption of the argumentation of a straight solution is the thesis about the possibility of knowing meanings. The article shows the need to further define the terms used in the argumentation, in particular the concept of introspection.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:184 BOOK REVIEWS knower, one may avoid undercutting the position that the cognitive powers are passive, without failing to do justice to the fact that aware· ness and discrimination are activities of the knower {pp. 71-72; 148· 49, n. 6). Second, Kai holds that the individual human being cannot really he said to have intuitive mind in himself: "Man has mind; hut only to a certain degree and without (...) mind losing its independence from the human whole.... the divine mind is present in man without los· ing its character of divine mind " (p. 75). If only God has intuitive mind {pp. 155, n. 32; 156-57, n. 13), how can the individual human being really know, even in the sense of having discursive thought? Since knowledge depends on first principles, what does not possess the intuitive mind which knows the first principles would, it seems, not properly have knowledge. The only hope for a definitive interpretation of the disconcertingly brief De Anima, 3. 5, lies in the possibility that one can establish a definite connection between this chapter and other elements in the Aris· totelian corpus, a connection that would elucidate the otherwise in· scrutable teaching on active mind. It is the great merit of Kai to have made an excellent case for a connection between De Anima, 3. 5, and two other elements in the Aristotelian corpus: nous as it functions in the logic and epistemology, and the unmoved mover of Metaphysics, Lambda. Exploring this connection in a penetrating and thorough analysis of a great body of Aristotelian and secondary te~ts, Kai has not merely taken a position on a more than two-thousand-year-old con· troversy, hut also has decisively advanced our understanding of active mind. St. John's University Jamaica, New York JAMES T. H. MARTIN Anselm Studies: An Occasional Journal. Vol. 2. Edited by JosEPH ScHNAUBELT, OSA, et al., White Plains, New York: Kraus Inter· national Publications, 1988. Pp. 634. $55.00. This volume contains the proceedings of the Fifth International Saint Anselm Conference (Villanova University, September 16-21, 1985). Held in conjunction with the Tenth International Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Conference, the meeting occasioned papers concen· trating on areas of "influence and juncture" in the life and thought of St. Anselm and St. Augustine. Given the dependence of much of Anselm's work on the thought of St. Augustine, the Conference took as its particular objective the understanding of the relationship between BOOK REVIEWS 185 faith and reason. While the focus of the papers in this volume includes both saints, the principal emphasis falls on Anselm as inheritor and interpretor of the methods and ideas of his intellectual ancestor. A brief introduction provides cameo presentations of Anselm's character as abbot, monk, and archbishop, together with a conspectus on Anselm's position vis-a-vis the canonical and ecclesiological issues of his day. The papers are then divided into five chapters: "Anselm's Monasticism." "The Proslogion Argument," "Truth: Anselm and Augustine," "Theological Method," and "The Anselmian Worldview." While the papers are of use to scholarly readers desiring detailed treatment of central issues in Anselm's logic and epistemology, the un· doubted strength of the collection lies in its well-calculated effort to integrate an understanding of Anselm's intellectual and spiritual out· look with the theological, spiritual, and literacy currents of his time. Especially for the historian of intellect and society, the essays in this volume provide analysis that advances our understanding of the cultural context of the 11th and 12th centuries. The contribution to our understanding of Anselm's culture is par· ticularly clear in the first and fourth divisions of the volume, the sec· tions dealing with monasticism and Anselm's worldview. In the former division, Glenn Olsen's assessment of " Anselm and Homosexuality" neatly evaluates the evidence for Anselm's sexual orientation made controversial by John Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality. In fact, the present article, together with its notes, provides a useful summary of the critical literature which has grown up of late around the Boswellian thesis as well as the study of literary expressions of affection in the 11th and 12th centuries. Olsen grasps the... (shrink)

The globalization in business and tourism becomes crucial more and more for the economical sustainability of local communities. In the presence of an epidemic outbreak, there must be such a decision on the policy by the host community as whether to accept visitors or not, the number of acceptable visitors, or the condition for acceptable visitors. Making use of an SIRI type of mathematical model, we consider the influence of visitors on the spread of a reinfectious disease in a community, (...) especially assuming that a certain proportion of accepted visitors are immune. The reinfectivity of disease here means that the immunity gained by either vaccination or recovery is imperfect. With the mathematical results obtained by our analysis on the model for such an epidemic dynamics of resident and visitor populations, we find that the acceptance of visitors could have a significant influence on the disease’s endemicity in the community, either suppressive or supportive. (shrink)

Toni Morrison suggests that storytelling is a highly effective way of structuring knowledge, and that the harnessing of a clever allegory, the search for well-patterned language is a constant, provocative engagement with the contemporary world. This article considers the ways poetry, imagination, and well-patterned language are utilized in the philosophies of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Rorty, and Leonard Harris. The author notes that there are apparent similarities between Rorty and Harris, but one should also notice that there are significant differences (...) in these two philosophical positions. The author ultimately argues that Harris's move toward poetry and well-patterned language is extremely powerful and needed if people wish to move beyond a well-established set of values and norms. Harris prods us to tell thought-provoking, engaging stories—to intricately tuck knowledge into allegory and well-patterned language—but do it without being an apologist for the prevailing bourgeois liberal democratic tradition. In this manner, the harnessing of metaphor and clever allegory, the creative engagement with poetry and well-patterned language (in philosophy) is a provocative means of engaging the oppression, dispossession, and immiseration of the contemporary world. (shrink)

This research study has done to identify and investigate the major factors behind the excessive usage of Facebook by the youth of Karachi and what kind of impacts they have to face on various aspects of their lives due to this much consumption of Facebook. In this research paper, the researcher has applied both types of methodology, Qualitative as well as Quantitative. The researcher has selected Karachi as the universe of the study. The data has collected in the manner of (...) survey forms filled by students of different universities and colleges of Karachi; aged from 18 to 30 and the sample size is 50 in which half of the population includes males and half females and 10 interviews are also conducted from teachers and parents of Facebook users. This research study raises major points related to the extreme usage of Facebook which includes the mental and physical conditions of adolescents, children’s progress in their academic lives, impacts on relationships and disturbance in routine works. The data has collected in a fair way. The results revealed that Facebook repercussion only happens when an individual is using it in an excessive amount. The researcher suggests that using Facebook could be beneficial only if people learns to use it in manageable levels and if they are able to create a balance between the virtual world and real world. (shrink)