Subliminal perception (SP) is today considered a well-supported theory stating that perception can occur without conscious awareness and have a significant impact on later behaviour and thought. In this article, we first present and discuss different approaches to the study of SP. In doing this, we claim that most approaches are based on a dichotomic measure of awareness. Drawing upon recent advances and discussions in the study of introspection and phenomenological psychology, we argue for both the possibility and necessity of (...) using an elaborated measure of subjective states. In the second part of the article, we present findings where these considerations are implemented in an empirical study. The results and implications are discussed in detail, both with reference to SP, and in relation to the more general problem of using elaborate introspective reports as data in relation to studies of cognition. (shrink)

Contributed articles on Advaita, Hindu philosophy, Vedic and Sanskrit literature.

This volume features the complete text of all regular papers, posters, and summaries of symposia presented at the 16th annual meeting of the Cognitive Science ...

Dr Devi Sridhar, Department of Politics and International relations, University of Oxford, All Souls College, High St, OX1 4AL UK, Email: devi.sridhar{at}politics.ox.ac.uk ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Abstract This paper discusses the politics of access to essential medicines and identifies ‘space’ in the current system where health concerns can be strengthened relative to trade. This issue is addressed from a global governance perspective focusing on the main actors who can have the greatest impact. (...) These include developing country coalitions and citizens in developed countries though participation in civil society organisations. These actors have combined forces to tackle this issue successfully, resulting in the 2001 Doha Declaration on Public Health. The collaboration has been so powerful due to the assistance of the media as well as the decision to compromise with pharmaceutical companies and their host countries. To improve access to essential medicines, six C's are needed: coalitions, civil society, citizenship, compromise, communication and collaboration. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

A skeptic claims that I do not have knowledge of the external world. It has been thought that the skeptic reaches this conclusion because she employs unusually stringent standards for knowledge. But the skeptic does not employ unusually high standards for knowledge. Rather, she employs unusually restrictive standards of evidence. Thus, her claim that we lack knowledge of the external world is supported by considerations that would equally support the claim that we lack evidence for our beliefs about the external (...) world. These considerations do not threaten the truth of our ordinary attributions of evidence, however, for such attributions are context-sensitive in their semantics. It is argued that this solution to the problem of the external world enjoys all of the benefits, and suffers none of the problems, of other solutions to the problem of the external world. (shrink)

The posthumous retrieval and use of gametes is socially, ethically, and legally controversial. In the countries that do not prohibit the practice, posthumous assisted reproduction is usually permitted only at the request of the surviving spouse and only when the deceased left written consent. This paper presents the recommendations of an ethics committee established by the Israeli Fertility Association. In its discussions, the committee addressed the ethical considerations of posthumous use of sperm—even in the absence of written consent from the (...) deceased—at the request of either the spouse or the deceased’s parents who wish to become the offspring’s parents or grandparents. It is concluded that under certain conditions, a request by the deceased’s parents to posthumously use the deceased’s sperm is justified and should be granted. (shrink)

In his recent Knowledge and its Limits, Timothy Williamson argues that no non-trivial mental state is such that being in that state suffices for one to be in a position to know that one is in it. In short, there are no “luminous” mental states. His argument depends on a “safety” requirement on knowledge, that one’s confident belief could not easily have been wrong if it is to count as knowledge. We argue that the safety requirement is ambiguous; on one (...) interpretation it is obviously true but useless to his argument, and on the other interpretation it is false. (shrink)

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad offers illuminating new perspectives on contemporary phenomenological theories of body and subjectivity, based on studies of diverse classical Indian texts. He argues for a 'phenomenological ecology' of bodily subjectivity in health, gender, contemplation, and lovemaking.

Healthcare data warehousing test automation is becoming a success through the help of AI-based technology that results in accuracy, efficiency, and data integrity on the automated test. The one central to personalized patient data that forms the core of traditional data warehousing solutions frequently faces problems of complexity and dissatisfaction. Deep learning with test automation solutions makes data ingestion, processing, and testing conversant through machine learning algorithms [1]. These systems encompass separate acts such as testing for data integration, testing the (...) quality of data as well as performance testing removing the factors of time and human error. In healthcare organizations, this approach delivers the message of enhancing quality, compliance and organizational efficiency in value-based care and precision medicine initiatives. As such, artificial intelligence tools can be used to address the essential issues regarding data warehousing, and this can in turn enhance decision-making, and thus, enhance the health of patient and the overall population. (shrink)

The dramatic title Against a Hindu God: Buddhist Philosophy of Religion in India, while accurate enough in some respects, does not do justice to this subtle, densely argued, technically demanding, and often astonishingly wide-ranging book by Parimal Patil. The traces of the doctoral thesis that it was in a previous life are still there, evident in the concern to explain methodology to inquisitorial examiners and the reluctance to let any footnote go by if it can possibly be included. That said, (...) it is a powerfully realized book. Against a Hindu God is structured in such a way as to gradually focus in on the subject of the core third chapter that gives the book its name, Ratnakīrti’s argument in the .. (shrink)

Account of teachers' experiences in developing the competency and professionalism in Indonesia; collection of articles.

Sometimes, there are reasons for which we believe, intend, resent, decide, and so on: these reasons are the “bases” of the latter, and the explanatory relation between these bases and the latter is what I will call “the basing relation.” What kind of explanatory relation is this? Dispositionalists claim that the basing relation consists in the agent’s manifesting a disposition to respond to those bases by having the belief, intention, resentment, and so on, in question. Representationalists claim that the basing (...) relation consists in the agent’s representing the bases as justifying the belief, intention, resentment, and so on, in question. This article shows that an adequate account of the basing relation requires a particular refinement and combination of these two views. On the hybrid account defended here, the basing relation involves a disposition exercise that is individuated by the agent’s object-involving de se representation of that very exercise as justifying. (shrink)

In the last decade, reading research has seen a paradigmatic shift. A new wave of computational models of orthographic processing that offer various forms of noisy position or context-sensitive coding have revolutionized the field of visual word recognition. The influx of such models stems mainly from consistent findings, coming mostly from European languages, regarding an apparent insensitivity of skilled readers to letter order. Underlying the current revolution is the theoretical assumption that the insensitivity of readers to letter order reflects the (...) special way in which the human brain encodes the position of letters in printed words. The present article discusses the theoretical shortcomings and misconceptions of this approach to visual word recognition. A systematic review of data obtained from a variety of languages demonstrates that letter-order insensitivity is neither a general property of the cognitive system nor a property of the brain in encoding letters. Rather, it is a variant and idiosyncratic characteristic of some languages, mostly European, reflecting a strategy of optimizing encoding resources, given the specific structure of words. Since the main goal of reading research is to develop theories that describe the fundamental and invariant phenomena of reading across orthographies, an alternative approach to model visual word recognition is offered. The dimensions of a possible universal model of reading, which outlines the common cognitive operations involved in orthographic processing in all writing systems, are discussed. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s On Certainty is sometimes read as providing a response to the skeptical puzzle from closure, according to which our commitment to the trustworthiness of our evidence is not itself evidentially grounded. In this paper, I argue both that this standard reading of Wittgenstein is incorrect, and that a more accurate reading of Wittgenstein provides us with a more plausible solution to the Closure Puzzle.

Contextualist solutions to skeptical puzzles have recently been subjected to various criticisms. In this paper, I will defend contextualism against an objection prominently pressed by Stanley 2000. According to Stanley, contextualism in epistemology advances an empirically implausible hypothesis about the semantics of knowledge ascriptions in natural language. It is empirically implausible because it attributes to knowledge ascriptions a kind of semantic context-sensitivity that is wholly unlike any well- established type of semantic context-sensitivity in natural language.

In The Namaste Effect, we are guided to such connection by tapping into our higher consciousness through the subtle energy centers known as chakras, to spark the release of love from our hearts and send it to others. With that action, we affect each other and eventually the entire globe. This book offers a way to live in this world by expressing love and compassion as our primary actions. Told through a series of examples and heartwarming stories, Nischala Devi (...) navigates through the seven chakras in her signature storytelling style that will appeal to her legions of avid fans as well as those new to her work. Many of these stories come from people who were tested beyond their limits and survived by reaching into the depth of their hearts to remember the spirit in everyone. They transformed profound wisdom by creating ways to resolve the traumas that life brings. Take the time to find your own narrative within their stories. Discover how can you use these stories and beliefs to gratify your life with the joy that is your birthright. As the pages unfurl, allow The Namaste Effect to reignite your heart to the experience of boundless love. It is this universal love that is present and available to all in the vastness of this universe. "...amazon.com. (shrink)

Bruce Janz, Jessica Locke, and Cynthia Willett interact in this exchange with different aspects of Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad’s book Human Being, Bodily Being. Through “constructive inter-cultural thinking”, they seek to engage with Ram-Prasad’s “lower-case p” phenomenology, which exemplifies “how to think otherwise about the nature and role of bodiliness in human experience”. This exchange, which includes Ram-Prasad’s reply to their interventions, pushes the reader to reflect more about different aspects of bodiliness.

This volume is a collection of Devi Prasad’s essays on Gandhi, social justice and social change. The different essays address themes ranging from Gandhi’s ideals of satyagraha and ahimsa, civil disobedience and non-violence, to the Gandhian approach to education as founded in making and crafting as well as participation in the political and social movements of our times. They also engage the revolutionary potential of Gandhi’s thought, drawing parallels between Lenin and Gandhi and analysing the historical significance of Gandhi’s (...) anti-imperialist yet non-violent political philosophy. In sum, the volume dwells on the continuing, critical relevance of Gandhi in our times. It will be of interest to those in education, political science, peace and conflict studies, history and philosophy, as well as to the general reader interested in Gandhian thought. (shrink)

Making decisions is an important component of everyday living, and issues surrounding autonomy and self-determination are crucial for persons with intellectual disabilities. Adults with intellectual disabilities are characterized by the limitations in their intellectual functioning and in their adaptive behavior, which compromises three skill types, and this starts before the age of 18. Though persons with intellectual disabilities are characterized by having these limitations, they are thought to face significant decisionmaking challenges due to their disability. Moving away from this generalization, (...) Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities addresses this issue of decision-making for persons with disabilities, recognizing the right to legal capacity. (shrink)

Rieber 1998 proposes an account of "S knows that p" that generates a contextualist solution to Closure. In this paper, I’ll argue that Rieber’s account of "S knows that p" is subject to fatal objections, but we can modify it to achieve an adequate account of "S knows that p" that generates a unified contextualist solution to all four puzzles. This is a feat that should matter to those philosophers who have proposed contextualist solutions to Closure: all of them have (...) motivated their contextualism by appeal to the fact that they can explain the plausibility of each of the statements in Closure taken individually, and they can do this without having to deny that each of those statements is true, at least in the context in which it is plausible. But notice that this consideration would equally well motivate a contextualist approach to the other puzzles. Nonetheless, no contextualist has yet suggested how a contextualist solution to the other puzzles might go. (shrink)

Rationality, whatever exactly it demands of us, promotes success, whatever exactly that is. Some philosophers interpret that slogan as something that can provide them with a way of reductively explaining the demands of rationality by appeal to some independently intelligible notion of success: being rational, they might say, is just having whatever property it is that promotes success. Other philosophers may interpret the same slogan as something that can provide them with a way of reductively explaining the notion of success (...) by appeal to some independently intelligible notion of the demands of rationality: having success, they might say, is just having whatever property it is that is promoted by being rational. In this paper, I argue that neither of these reductive efforts can succeed. I then argue that understanding the way in which rationality promotes success requires us to understand why the promotion relation between rationality and success can be severed by some kinds of luck, but not by others. To explain the kind of luck that can sever promotion, we should conceive of both rationality and success as distinct but related facets of something more fundamental than either of them. (shrink)

En este texto se afirma la igualdad entre los hombres y mujeres, pues ambos poseen el mismo potencial infinito e inherente. La espiritualidad verdadera implica el autoconocimiento y consiste en realizar el poder de vida y de amar que existe potencialmente en todos nosotros. Es necesario superar toda forma de discriminación hacia las mujeres. La autora convoca a las mujeres a luchar por sus derechos, pues dice que están dormidas y deben despertar, cambiar su mente, redescubrir y valorar que representan (...) el principio espiritual por excelencia: la maternidad universal. Debe liberarse de los prejuicios de la sociedad patriarcal, no sólo por ellas mismas, sino porque todas las sociedades actuales necesitan explicitar y desarrollar los valores femeninos contenidos en dicho principio: amor no egoísta, fortaleza, delicadeza, paciencia y tolerancia. La paz no será posible si no se reestablece la armonía entre lo masculino y femenino que residen en cada hombre y mujer. Sólo así podrá superarse el odio y la competencia que imperan en el mundo actual. (shrink)

Classical Sanskrit poem on Krishna, Hindu deity, also, illustrating the rules of Sanskrit grammar as in Aṣṭādhyāyi of Pāṇini; based on rare manuscripts.

In its long development the Italian cooperative movement went through slow and steady transformations, that have generally sheltered it from radical discontinuities. The different trends and political traditions that have become intertwined with the history of the cooperative movement highlight the flexibility of the cooperative principles which have been adapted on the basis of different situations, without being modified in their abstract outlines. In this paper we argue that the Italian cooperative movement on the one hand seems to have absorbed (...) the principles of market economy through the adoption of organization of productions and functional structures similar to those of many capitalist companies. On the other hand Italian cooperative movement have developed a peculiar form of social action based on the institutionalization of postulates such as the mutual aid and solidarity. In short the cooperative form has historically constituted and continues to be shaped as a peculiar pattern in which undercapitalization requires a wider-ranging fluidity of the working relationships. These have been raised to the ranks of moral values in social action. (shrink)