Using the philosophy of non-duality as a framework, with a Foreword from Deepak Chopra, Anoop Kumar takes us on an exploration of identity. You are not who you think you are.

And in general it is a sign of the man who knows and of the man who does not know that the former can teach, and therefore we think art more truly knowledge than experience is; for the artist can teach, and men of experience cannot. When pragmatism first gained favor in the early twentieth century, some British philosophers like Russell regarded it as evidencing their perception of America’s crude and enterprising spirit.1 The Imperial jab lay in this: that just (...) as business indicates the exchange of products and services to meet basic needs as well as others, for the pragmatist, knowledge is tied to social practices and instrumentality (that is, being able to effect changes in the world). The slight lies .. (shrink)

In his magnum opus, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (1989), Charles Taylor gives an exhaustive and teleologically interpretive history of the modern self. He, in fact, is in search of the core of the modern identity. By ‘identity’ Taylor means the ensemble of the understanding of what is to be a ‘human agent’, a ‘person’, a ‘self’. Taylor in generating the ontology of the self is greatly inspired by the understanding of Dasein in Heidegger. This paper (...) also focuses on how Taylor uses Heidegger’s hermeneutics of the self in several ways to give to modernity a base that is not Cartesian. Taylor’s central argument is ‘how the assertion of the modern individual has spawned an erroneous understanding (identity) of the self’, where one experiences a loss of horizon. He has turned our attention, more than anyone else, towards the communitarian constitution of the self, and pointed out the limitations of insights within liberal individualism. For Taylor, as for early Heidegger, the self is not neutral or atomic. The self exists only in terms of questions and constitutive concerns, and it is not amenable to arbitrary determination, but can be made sense of only in terms of its life as a whole at any moment. (shrink)

A natural realist approach to the philosophy of arithmetic is defended by way of considering and arguing against contemporary attempts to solve Paul Benacerraf's dilemma . The first horn of the dilemma concerns the existence of abstract mathematical objects, which seems necessitated by a desire for a unified semantics. Benacerraf adopts an extensional semantics whereby the reference of terms for natural numbers must be abstract objects. The second horn concerns a desirable causal constraint on knowledge, according to which "for X (...) to know that S is true requires some causal relation to obtain between X and the referents of the names, predicates, and quantifiers of S". Within the philosophical tradition, Benacerraf's dilemma crystallizes the tension between realists and empiricists . It is shown that natural realism and naturalism meet. ;Both horns of the dilemma are amended.objects are conceived along conceptualist lines such that their existence is not mind-independent. The causal constraint is refined by drawing upon the work of Mark Steiner . Natural realism is the notion that the truth-values of arithmetical statements are recognition-transcendent. Natural realism explains why one and only one arithmetic is applicable. It is in some sense discovered, which is captured by the idea that arithmetical statements have truth-values even if one is not able to adduce what they are. ;It is argued that with proper emendation, like that of Philip Kitcher , empiricism as envisioned by J. S. Mill is defensible. Furthermore, the epistemology of arithmetical knowledge is divided into two tiers. The first principles of arithmetic are acquired by causal interaction with physical objects. As Kitcher has shown, empiricism functions at the first-tier. The a priori is revised such that arithmetical knowledge generated from the first-tier is considered non-empirical. ;It is argued that pragmatists' indispensability argument, once qualified, allows that arithmetic's applicability is one reason to consider natural realism for that domain . Furthermore, this thesis provides a case where aspects of Hilary Putnam's early and later views are rendered consistent. By way of utilizing both Putnam's writing in favour of realism , and those that break with them , it is suggested that he should not have abandoned his earlier view. In a nutshell, the realization of knowledge can depend upon agents' values, methods, and so on, without forcing the abandonment of realism . Putnam's early view sets the criteria for when one can be a realist about a given domain. (shrink)

A preoccupation with technology has helped bury the philosophical question: What is the point of education? I attempt to answer this question. Various answers to the question are surveyed and it is shown that they depend upon different conceptions of the self. For example, the devotional-self of the 12th century (which was about becoming master of the self) gave way to the liberal-self (which was to facilitate social change). Education can only be satisfactorily justified, I argue, by appeal to transcendent (...) values such as mastery of the self, which is incipient in liberal education. (shrink)

Is it possible to found a Heideggerian ethic around the notion of a relationship to being (Bezug zum Seyn)? Going against much of the Western tradition, Gupta considers if the being-relationship could result in a feeling or mystical experience that is the basis of ethics. Along the way, such an affective and embodied approach to ethics brings us into dialogue with a range of thinkers, such as Kant and Schweitzer. Further, it is suggested that an environmental philosophy is consistent with (...) a Heideggerian ethics. Finally, recent research in the neurosciences is marshaled to at least show the plausibility of Heidegger's brand of moral realism as it is developed. (shrink)

My ultimate goal has always been to illuminate artistry at its greatest heights. Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences provided a theoretical framework for his life-long study of creativity, especially in prodigies like Picasso.1 According to Gardner, Picasso was weak in the scholastics and strong in the spatial, bodily, and personal spheres, characterizing the artist even as “frankly sadistic.”2 And Gardner developed a general framework for understanding the prodigy in terms of one’s proclivity toward meta-cognition as well as other commonalities (...) related to intrapersonal and interpersonal relations in various ways: childlike, few friends, one-minded, productivity, sacrifice, episodic .. (shrink)

An attempt was made to show how we can plausibly commit to mathematical realism. For the purpose of illustration, a defence of natural realism for arithmetic was developed that draws upon the American pragmatist’s, Hillary Putnam’s, early and later writings. Natural realism is the idea that truth is recognition-transcendent and knowable. It was suggested that the natural realist should embrace, globally, what N. Tennant has identified as M-realism (Tennant 1997, 160). M-realism is the idea that one rejects bivalence and assents (...) to the recognition-transcendent requirement. It was argued that over-all—for all domains—the natural realist should be a M-realist, with the aim of clarifying the realist debate for arithmetic. (shrink)

This article discusses the importance of human beings ‘material’ (matter) and ‘spiritual’ (spirit) advancement in Rammanohar Lohia’s concept of modernity and modern civilization. Lohia consistently defended materialism (reason) and spirituality as pivotal human values in his writing and speeches. This article engages with his ideas through a detailed reading of his works, focusing particularly on his essays: ‘Materiality and Spirituality’ and ‘Meaning of Modern Civilisation’. According to him, rational thinking emerges from materialism. He believed spiritual instinct keeps a check on (...) the malicious employment of rationality and science; similarly, rationality prevents the perversion of spirituality into superstition and dogmatism. This article articulates two aspects of interpreting modernity: first, it reframes the epistemological understanding of materialism and spirituality, challenging and clarifying prevailing misconceptions; second, it advocates a comprehensive reconstruction of Indian society, which we understand as praxis. His concept of modernity is an amalgamation of theory and praxis. Lohia unequivocally emphasizes that Indian society would reach the height of development by simultaneously engaging in the spiritual and material development of Indian civilization. (shrink)

As web analytics become increasingly common in newsrooms worldwide, it is imperative to understand how they are employed to meet news organizations’ journalistic and business goals. This study examines the evolution and applications of web analytics in newsrooms through a comprehensive analysis of relevant literature. It situates the rise of web analytics in the larger historical, social, and financial context. It explores the strategies news organizations adopt to integrate web analytics in news production. After discussing the impact of analytics on (...) news production, the project juxtaposes the pessimistic ethical concerns—primarily the prediction of market logic uprooting journalistic logic—surrounding the use of web analytics in newsrooms with ground realities. Finally, in view of the analysis, we reflect on the ethical concerns against analytics, the state of editorial autonomy in newsrooms, the implications of newly empowered audience for news ecosystem, and conclude with a practical view of analytics in newsrooms. (shrink)

Media portrayal has a huge impact on young fashion and style preferences, driving both social and personal trends. This study investigates whether media portrayals, such as social media, television, and fashion businesses, influence young adults' fashion choices and self-image. The study investigates the influence of exposure to media on fashion preference formation through the analysis of collected datasets. The key findings show that fashion personalities and media channels have a significant impact on style acceptance. The study focuses on how brand (...) reputation and the variety of media content impact consumer behavior. It employs SPSS software to conduct statistical methods, such as Chi-Square tests, to examine the link between demographic factors and media influence. The findings underscore the dynamic nature of fashion trends influenced by media and emphasize the need to understand how media shapes the fashion choices of today's youth. (shrink)

Fourfold is thought to be a defining theme of Heidegger’s later thought, and yet it remains to be one of the most controversial notions in Heidegger scholarship. Interpreting the fourfold has been a challenging issue. Some of them dismissed it as having no real philosophical weight, despite its overarching presence in many of Heidegger’s later literature. Some of them tried to interpret it without giving due attention to the intricacies at hand. In this paper, we argue that, Julian Young’s understanding (...) of the fourfold in terms of the twofold of nature and culture has certain drawbacks owing to its emphasis on the literal meanings. We also suggest an interpretative strategy to avoid the pitfalls of literal and metaphorical readings, in which Andrew Mitchell’s interpretation is a good case in point. Mitchell’s marvelous attempt to think the fourfold in terms of relationality, can be seen as a best ever effort, in that, it not only remedies many of the problems of previous interpretations, including that of Young but it also gives due consideration to the intricate relations between what Heidegger would call the technological standing reserve and the thing of the fourfold. We will also discuss how Young’s interpretative problems can be remedied, in the new light provided by Mitchell. Finally, we suggest that Mitchell’s reading should be complemented with an adequate account of the holy, in which, the holy is understood as a principle of unification and wholesomeness of the members of the fourfold, apart from understanding it purely in terms of the God, one of the members of the fourfold. (shrink)

We present an implementation of a discourse parsing system for alexicalized Tree-Adjoining Grammar for discourse, specifying the integrationof sentence and discourse level processing. Our system is based on theassumption that the compositional aspects of semantics at thediscourse level parallel those at the sentence level. This coupling isachieved by factoring away inferential semantics and anaphoric features ofdiscourse connectives. Computationally, this parallelism is achievedbecause both the sentence and discourse grammar are LTAG-based and the sameparser works at both levels. The approach to an (...) LTAG for discourse has beendeveloped by Webber and colleagues in some recent papers. Our system takes a discourseas input, parses the sentences individually, extracts the basic discourseconstituent units from the sentence derivations, and reparses the discoursewith reference to the discourse grammar while using the same parser usedat the sentence level. (shrink)

One of the areas of concern raised by cross-border reproductive travel regards the treatment of women who are solicited to provide their ova or surrogacy services to foreign consumers. This is particularly troublesome in the context of developing countries where endemic poverty and low standards for both medical care and informed consent may place these women at risk of exploitation and harm. We explore two contrasting proposals for policy development regarding the industry, both of which seek to promote ethical outcomes (...) and social justice: While one proposal advocates efforts to minimize cross-border demand for female reproductive resources through the pursuit of national self-sufficiency, the other defends cross-border trade as a means for meeting the needs of vulnerable groups. Despite the conflicting objectives of the proposed strategies, the paper identifies common values and points of agreement between the two, including the importance of regulations to safeguard those providing ova or surrogacy services. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Rousseau is an important precursor of the Counter-Enlightenment. To this end, I will examine the parallels between his partial critique of the Enlightenment and that of Joseph de Maistre, whose work represents one of the most comprehensive and systematic indictments of the central ideas and objectives of the Enlightenment. Despite his frequent denunciations of Rousseau's ideas and influence, Maistre shares with him a profound concern for what he takes to be the disastrous social and (...) political ramifications of eighteenth-century ideas, and he selectively appropriates many of Rousseau's arguments to support his own, more radical critique of the Enlightenment. Between 1749, when Rousseau's Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts first appeared, and the publication of Maistre's Soir?es de Saint-Petersbourg in 1821, a movement gradually developed against the Enlightenment, culminating in a complete rejection of its central ideas and assumptions by many writers of the early nineteenth century. Rousseau is a crucial figure in this movement. His writings, beginning with his first discourse, contain one of the earliest major critiques of the Enlightenment project. In a sense, Maistre's works are the consummation of many of the ideas and arguments first directed against the Enlightenment by Rousseau. (shrink)

A mathematical model for Vibrio Cholerae (V. Cholerae) in a closed environment is considered, with the aim of investigating the impact of climatic factors which exerts a direct influence on the bacterial metabolism and on the bacterial reservoir capacity. We first propose a V. Cholerae mathematical model in a closed environment. A sensitivity analysis using the eFast method was performed to show the most important parameters of the model. After, we extend this V. cholerae model by taking account climatic factors (...) that influence the bacterial reservoir capacity. We present the theoretical analysis of the model. More precisely, we compute equilibria and study their stabilities. The stability of equilibria was investigated using the theory of periodic cooperative systems with a concave nonlinearity. Theoretical results are supported by numerical simulations which further suggest the necessity to implement sanitation campaigns of aquatic environments by using suitable products against the bacteria during the periods of growth of aquatic reservoirs. (shrink)

In the case of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) imaging, image processing is crucial. In the medical industry, MRI images are commonly used to analyze and diagnose tumor growth in the body. A number of successful brain tumor identification and classification procedures have been developed by various experts. Existing approaches face a number of obstacles, including detection time, accuracy, and tumor size. Early detection of brain tumors improves options for treatment and patient survival rates. Manually segmenting brain tumors from a significant (...) number of MRI data for brain tumor diagnosis is a tough and time-consuming task. Automatic image segmentation of brain tumors is required. The objective of this study is to evaluate the degree of accuracy and simplify the medical picture segmentation procedure used to identify the type of brain tumor from MRI results. Additionally, this work suggests a novel method for identifying brain malignancies utilizing the Bagging Ensemble with K-Nearest Neighbor (BKNN) in order to raise the KNN’s accuracy and quality rate. For image segmentation, a U-Net architecture is utilized first, followed by a bagging-based k-NN prediction algorithm for classification. The goal of employing U-Net is to improve the accuracy and uniformity of parameter distribution in the layers. Each decision tree is fitted on a little different training dataset during classification, and the bagged decision trees are effective since each tree has minor differences and generates slightly different skilled predictions. The overall classification accuracy was up to 97.7 percent, confirming the efficiency of the suggested strategy for distinguishing normal and pathological tissues from brain MR images; this is greater than the methods that are already in use. (shrink)

In questo volume sono raccolti gli scritti frutto della ricerca effettuata nell’ambito del Progetto: “Ontologia Formale e Ontologie: uno Strumento per il Dialogo Interdisciplinare e Interculturale”. Scopo del progetto è mostrare al pubblico intellettuale italiano, sia di estrazione scientifica che umanistica, le potenzialità dello strumento dell’ontologia in generale, e dell’ontologia formale in particolare, per il dialogo costruttivo interdisciplinare e interculturale. Dialogo interdisciplinare per il rapporto fra discipline scientifiche e umanistiche, dialogo interculturale per il rapporto fra le diverse culture e religioni (...) in una società globalizzata. (shrink)

In this article I draw on two scenarios from my personal life—the diagnosis of my newborn grandnephew with CHARGE syndrome and the diagnosis of my father with depression—to reflect on whether and when diagnosis may be harmful to patients. Despite the great differences between the two scenarios, I argue that in both cases the tendency of diagnosis to generalize, categorize, and stigmatize can lead to insidious and counterproductive effects. The perspective of disability studies can help physicians to anticipate, minimize or (...) avoid these negative ramifications. I also reflect on the matter of who "owns" a particular diagnosis, whose purposes it serves, and how. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 6, Page 46-47, June 2012.

The Platonic Commentators.—After Cicero the Academy is no more than a few names to us for nearly five centuries. The nearest that we get to contact with it in this period is in the writings of Plutarch. He was himself a student there, and was well read in the books of Plato and the commentaries thereon.