In photoreceptors of a dark adapted eye, the inward flux of sodium and calcium ions in the outer segment is balanced by the outward flux of potassium ions. But in the presence of light the creation of cyclic guanosine monophosphate in the outer segment decreases. Due to low concentration of cG the channels in the outer segment open relatively less and thus the influx of calcium ion decreases, leading finally to hyperpolarization of the photoreceptors. We have analyzed theoretically the effect (...) of oxidizing iron ions on the photoreceptors. In order to explain the effects of iron-induced oxidative stress, the different molecules and ions involved in phototransduction are quantified leading to a differential equation for calculating the electroretinogram a-wave voltage. The theoretical results are compared with published experimental data. In the presence of light, the iron ions could push outward the similarly charged calcium ions resulting in a small increase in the amount of inward calcium flux. Again, the presence of iron ions generates Reactive Oxygen Species, and ROS could attract the calcium ions which also increases the calcium flux. This will result in a reduction in the amplitude and slope of the a-wave voltage in the electroretinogram. These results are parametrized in terms of calcium ion concentrations. As the amplitude of the a-wave shows how much electrical signal is produced, its reduction indicates reduction in the visual signal. Thus, the increase in iron ions could explain the reduction in the electrical signal due to iron-induced oxidative stress. (shrink)

In decision-making involving multiple criteria or attributes, a decision maker first identifies all relevant evaluative attributes in making decisions. Then, a dominance principle is often invoked whenever applicable: whenever an option x is better than an option y in terms of some attribute and no worse than y in terms of any other attributes, x is judged to be better than y. If, however, this dominance principle is not applicable, then the decision maker determines the relative importance between the identified (...) evaluative attributes, consults with contextual features of the options under consideration, and makes a decision. It is shown that the combination of these principles runs into problems in the presence of rationality properties, such as transitivity, and a weak continuity requirement on decisions. The paper gives examples from welfare economics, and theories of individual and group decisions. (shrink)

We consider the role of preferences in the assessment of an agent's freedom, visualized as the opportunity for choice. After discussing several possible intuitive approaches to the problem, we explore an approach based on the notion of preference orderings that a reasonable person may possibly have. Using different sets of axioms, we characterize the rules for ranking opportunity sets in terms of freedom. We also show that certain axioms for ranking opportunity sets are incompatible.

The paper seeks to interpret the liberal paradox in a framework where individual rights are represented as game forms. Several close counterparts, in this framework, of Sen’s theorem are considered, and their intuitive significance is discussed.

This note comments on Professor Majumdar’s concept of an individual who seeks to change his own preferences over time. It is argued that while one can formulate “revealed preference axioms“ which will rationalize the choices of Professor Majumdar’s individual, it is unlikely that the choice of such an individual will reveal his preferences.

The notions of personal connection and social networks are key ingredients of the increasingly important concept of social capital in social sciences in general and in economics in particular. This paper discusses the problem of measuring personal connection and the extent of social networks that may exist in a society. For this purpose we develop several conceptual and analytical frameworks. In the process, we axiomatically characterize several measures of personal connection and social networks.

This paper develops a conceptual framework, which can accommodate a wide range of value judgements used in ethical evaluations of extended social states and which can be used to differentiate different categories of value judgements by referring to the type of information on which they may be based. The notions of consequentialism, non-consequentialism, exclusive focus on personal well-being, exclusive focus on utility, etc. are conceptualized in operational ways in the framework. The framework and the discussion of different types of ethical (...) criteria that may be used in evaluating extended social states contribute to conceptual clarity about the ethical bases of public policies. (shrink)

The microfinance business model focuses largely on lending to the woman in the household, rather than the man. The belief is that women are more trustworthy borrowers than men, and that lending to women may have increased social impact. Yet in several cases, women do not have control over the loan backed business despite being the borrower of record. Such takeover of the business by the man constitutes an ethical violation. We find that high dependency ratios in the family are (...) correlates of such ethical violations. Further, we also find that ethical violations have a significant economic cost, consistent with prior scholarship in the family-business domain. While access to microfinance increases household welfare, this beneficial impact reduces by over 50% in the presence of an ethical violation. Our results suggest that microfinance lenders need to move beyond the traditional role of just being a lender to providing advice on issues like family planning, and money management, and enforcement, thus moving closer to the solidarity economy paradigm of integrating savings and credit into broader canvases of social relationships and social structures. (shrink)

We propose a novel edge detector in the presence of Gaussian noise with the use of proximal support vector machine (PSVM). The edges of a noisy image are detected using a two-stage architecture: smoothing of image is first performed using regularized anisotropic diffusion, followed by the classification using PSVM, termed as regularized anisotropic diffusion-based PSVM (RAD-PSVM) method. In this process, a feature vector is formed for a pixel using the denoised coefficient’s class and the local orientations to detect edges in (...) all possible directions in images. From the experiments, conducted on both synthetic and benchmark images, it is observed that our RAD-PSVM approach outperforms the other state-of-the-art edge detection approaches, both qualitatively and quantitatively. (shrink)

The classical theory of rational choice is built on several important internal consistency conditions. In recent years, the reasonableness of those internal consistency conditions has been questioned and criticized, and several responses to accommodate such criticisms have been proposed in the literature. This paper develops a general framework to accommodate the issues raised by the criticisms of classical rational choice theory, and examines the broad impact of these criticisms from both normative and positive points of view.

The role of Indian ethos in management practices is explored by several management scholars and practitioners. Professor Sitangshu Kumar Chakraborty (popularly known as Professor S. K. Chakraborty, hereinafter referred to as SKC in this article) is one of the pioneering scholars of human value-oriented management practices and has made significant contributions in linking the management knowledge and practices to classical Indian ethos and Vedantic wisdom. In today’s technologically advanced and economically fast-paced world, there is a rising concern about falling human (...) values in work and in personal life, which must be addressed to understand the deeper meaning of work and a higher purpose in life. SKC’s innovative approaches to human values in management education for practising managers are quite significant in this regard. This article is a sincere attempt to explore and synthesize the contributions of SKC to the human value-oriented management that evolved around the fundamental pillars of classical Indian ethos and Vedantic wisdom and the implication of those values for today’s managers to realign their managerial practices. This article is based on a bibliometric analysis of published articles drawn from secondary sources and is a tribute to the life and legacy of SKC on human value-based management. (shrink)

Book Reviews Conrad Heilmann, Economics and Philosophy, FirstView Article.

In this book K. Brad Wray provides a comprehensive survey of the arguments against scientific realism. In addition to presenting logical considerations that undermine the realists' inferences to the likely truth or approximate truth of our theories, he provides a thorough assessment of the evidence from the history of science. He also examines grounds for a defence of anti-realism, including an anti-realist explanation for the success of our current theories, an account of why false theories can be empirically successful, and (...) an explanation for why we should expect radical changes of theory in the future. His arguments are supported and illustrated by cases from the history of science, including a sustained study of the Copernican Revolution, and a study of the revolution in early twentieth century chemistry, when chemists came to classify elements by their atomic number rather than by their atomic weight. (shrink)

The author proposes a method of verification for moral statements. (staff).

Phenomenological analyses of ageing and old age have examined themes such as alterity, finitude, and time, not seldom from the perspective of “healthy” aging. Phenomenologists have also offered detailed analyses of lived experiences of illness including lived experiences of dementia. This article offers a phenomenological account of what we label as entering the grey zone of aging between “healthy” aging and aging with a disease. This account is developed through a qualitative phenomenological philosophy analysis of elderly persons’ lived experiences of (...) being tested for dementia through primary care in Sweden, i.e., within a cultural context where dementia commonly is understood as a frightening a loss of self even though this understanding also is questioned. To enter this grey zone of aging, we argue, does not dissolve dynamic self-becoming but can involve an experience of oneself as being old. Further, in the grey zone, the self experiences itself as neither fully healthy nor as having a disease, and as needing to negotiate and live this ambiguity. To enter this grey zone is to enter an affectively charged, sociocultural and medicalized zone, and while the self can still act in different ways within it, staying in the grey zone can result in a re-orientation in the self’s mode of being, in ways that are thoroughly beyond its control. To stay in the grey zone can have detrimental effects on the self, even though the self does not have a disease: the self can become “stuck” in a reflective mode of attending to embodiment, aging, health, and disease. (shrink)

The ethical treatment of cancer patientsparticipating in clinical trials requiresthat patients are well-informed about thepotential benefits and risks associated withparticipation. When patients enrolled in phaseI clinical trials report that their chance ofbenefit is very high, this is often taken as evidence of a failure of the informed consent process. We argue, however, that some simple themes from the philosophy of language may make such a conclusion less certain. First, the patient may receive conflicting statements from multiple speakers about the expected (...) outcome of the trial. Patients may be reporting the message they like best. Second, there is a potential problem of multivocality. Expressions of uncertainty of the frequency type can be confused with expressionsof uncertainty of the belief type. Patients may be informed using frequency-type statements and respond using belief-type statements. Third, each speech episode involving the investigator and the patient regarding outcomes may subservemultiple speech acts, some of which may beindirect. For example, a patient reporting ahigh expected benefit may be reporting a beliefabout the future, reassuring family members,and/or attempting to improve his or her outcome by apublic assertion of optimism. These sources oflinguistic confusion should be considered injudging whether the patient's reported expectation isgrounds for a bioethical concern that there hasbeen a failure in the informed consent process. (shrink)

What happens to the inner light of consciousness with the death of the individual body and brain? Reductive materialism assumes it simply fades to black. Others think of consciousness as indicating a continuation of self, a transformation, an awakening or even alternatives based on the quality of life experience. In this issue, speculation drawn from theoretic research are presented. -/- Table of Contents Epigraph: From “The Immortal”, Jorge Luis Borges iii Editor’s Introduction: I Killed a Squirrel the Other Day, Gregory (...) M. Nixon iv-xi Research Essays The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument Teed Rockwell 862-881 Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology, Steve Bindeman 882-899 The Idealist View of Consciousness After Death, Bernardo Kastrup 900-909 Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon—A Hypothesis, Eva Déli 910-930 The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death, Bryon K. Ehlmann 931-950 Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathway, Contzen Pereira & J Shashi Kiran Reddy 951-968 On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death, Massimo Pregnolato & Alfredo Pereira Jr. 969-991 Science and Postmortem Survival, Edward F. Kelly 992-1011 Explorations ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics, Chris H. Hardy 1012-1035 Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? Radivoj Stankovich (with Micho Durdevich) 1036-1050 Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death, Ken Bausch 1051-1063 Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm, Ronald Peter Glasberg 1064-1077 Living With Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness, Donald Brackett 1078-1098 Mysticism, Consciousness, Death, Mike Sosteric 1099-1118 What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James, Jonathan Bricklin 1119-1140 Theories of Consciousness and Death: Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? Roger Cook 1141-1153 It’s the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World, James P. Kowall & Pradeep B. Deshpande 1154-1208 Statements A Feminine Vision for the World Consciousness, & a New Outrageous Ontology, Lorna Green 1209-1217 The Mask of Eternity: The Quest for Immortality and the Afterlife, Iona Miller 1218-1228 Are We Really “such stuff as dreams are made on”? Chris Nunn 1229-1225 Is the Afterlife a Non-Question? (Let's Hope Not), Deepak Chopra 1226-1230 Life After Death? An Improbable Essay, Stuart Kauffman 1231-1236. (shrink)

Fasıl ve vasıl konusu, nahvin atıf konusuyla da ilişkili olarak cümlelerin bağlanma hususunu ele alan belagatın me‘ânî alanının önemli bir konusudur. Bu konuda, cümleler arasındaki anlam ilişkilerine dair bir takım kavramlar geliştirilmiş, cümlelerin bağlanmasıyla ilgili esaslar oluşturulmuştur. Bu konunun ele aldığı cümleler, aralarında sebep-sonuç, zıtlık, karşılaştırma vb. anlam ilişkileri bulunan cümleler değil, bu tür anlam ilişkileri dışında art arda gelen ve paragrafın oluşumuna katkı sunan cümlelerdir. Bu cümleler, bağlama dışında başka bir anlamı olmayan vav bağlacıyla veya bağlaçsız biçimde sıralanır. Bağlaçsız (...) sıralanan cümleler arasında modern dönemde noktalama işaretleri kullanılmaktadır. Fasıl ve vasıl konusu kendi kavramları ve sistematiği içerisinde cümlelerin bağlanmasını ve bağlanma esaslarını açıklamaktadır. Ancak bu tür cümlelerin ve bunların bağlanma konusunun Türkçe dilbilgisindeki karşılığı tartışılmamıştır. Çalışmanın bir kısmında bu konunun Türkçe kavramsal karşılığı teorik olarak tartışılmakta ve sıralı bağlı cümleler olduğu tespiti yapılmaktadır. Çalışmanın diğer kısmında ise fasıl ve vasıl konusunda ele alınan cümleler Türkçe dilbilgisi perspektifinden hareketle yeni bir bakışla sunulmaktadır. Sıralı bağlı cümlelerin noktalama işaretleriyle ilişkisi olduğundan fasıl ve vasıl konusundaki cümlelerin bu işaretlerle olan ilişkisi de açıklığa kavuşturulmaktadır. (shrink)

A review of empirical and theoretical work on reasoning and linguistic inference, which will be a useful introduction to the subject for students of language and thought. The book focuses on the relationship between what people do and what people are supposed to do when making inferences.

Irreversibility, it is claimed, is a much broader concept than is entropy increase, as is shown by the occurrence of certain processes which are irreversible without seeming to involve any intrinsic entropy change. These processes include the spreading outwards into space of particles, or of radiation, and they also include certain biological and mental phenomena. For instance, the irreversible and treelike branching which is characteristic of natural evolution is not entropic when it is considered in itself—i.e. in abstraction from accompanying (...) biochemical and physiological activity. What appears to be the common feature of all forms of irreversibility is the fanning out of trajectories, new entities or new states, in the temporal direction towards the future. (shrink)

A partir de son apparemment étrange observation d'une influence cachée des étoiles sur l'action humaine une attentive reconsidération du concept de l'actus humanus de Saint Thomas dans la Prima Secundae révèle une vue plus ample des processus internes à l'agent humain qui contribuent à la spécification individuelle de l'action humaine et, donc, de la liberté humaine. Il semble que parmi les adeptes de la théorie thomiste de l'action, l'influence importante que l'appétit sensible peut exercer en cette direction, tout en restant (...) entièrement caché aux actes conscients de l'intellect et de la volonté de la personne, n'a pas été reconnue jusqu'aujourd'hui. Dans sa théorie de l'action Saint Thomas fournit un cadre solide pour une réflexion ultérieure sur l'influence de l'inconscient dynamique sur la liberté et pour une intégration critique interdisciplinaire des intuitions valides de la psychologie des profondeurs. En plus, il semble que la redécouverte de son concept plus large de l'actus humunus rende possible de repenser à profit certains éléments classique de son éthique. (shrink)