In his doctoral dissertation, Harold Garfinkel critically examined Talcott Parsons' classical formulation of the problem of order referred to as the Hobbesian problem. Garfinkel's criticism can be summarized under the following three headings: (1) common sense rationality replaces scientific rationality; (2) the level of the premises of conduct replaces the level of de facto action; (3) congruence theory replaces the correspondence theory. The aim of this paper is to make some observations on the structure of the problem of order which (...) Garfinkel discovered through this criticism. I propose to call it the Rashomon problem after Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon. Ethnomethodology can be regarded as an attempt to solve the Rashomon problem. (shrink)

法に対して合理的で批判的な姿勢を吹き込もうとする試み。ハート=ドゥオーキン論争以降の「法実証主義の現代的展開」を描き出す。本書ではとくに、ハートの理論的継承者であるラズおよびマーモーの議論に注目する。 .

We investigate several fluctuation effects in high-energy hadronic and nuclear collisions through the analysis of different observables. To introduce fluctuations in the initial stage of collisions, we use the interacting gluon model (IGM) modified by the inclusion of the impact parameter. The inelasticity and leading-particle distributions follow directly from this model. The fluctuation effects on rapidity distributions are then studied using Landau's hydrodynamic model in one dimension. To investigage further the effects of the multiplicity fluctuation, we use the longitudinal phase-space (...) model, with the multiplicity distribution calculated within the hydrodynamic model, and the initial conditions given by the IGM. Forward-backward correlation is obtained in this way. (shrink)

Der Band enthält die drei bislang unveröffentlichten "Krisenhefte" von Marx mit Exzerpten, Zeitungsausschnitten und Notizen, die 1857/1858 während der ersten Weltwirtschaftskrise entstanden sind. Die Materialsammlung dokumentiert Marx’ empirische Untersuchung dieser Krise, die er mit der Zusammenstellung und Systematisierung von Artikeln, Angaben und Kommentaren aus führenden Zeitungen wie "The Times", "The Morning Star", "The Standard", "The Manchester Guardian" und "The Economist" durchführte. In den Auszügen werden Wirtschafts- und Finanzfragen in den europäischen Ländern sowie den USA, China, Indien, Ägypten, Australien und Brasilien (...) behandelt, der Finanz- und Warenmarkt untersucht, sowie Daten zu Konkursen, Arbeitslosigkeit, Kurzarbeit, Lohnentwicklung und Arbeitskämpfen festgehalten. Die Krisenhefte stehen in engem Zusammenhang mit Marx’ "Grundrissen der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie", seinen Artikeln für die "New-York Tribune" und Debatten mit Engels, in denen allesamt die Krise 1857/58 analysiert wird. (shrink)

As most work on flower foraging focuses on bees, studying Lepidoptera can offer fresh perspectives on how sensory capabilities shape the interaction between flowers and insects. Through a combination of innate preferences and learning, many Lepidoptera persistently visit particular flower species. Butterflies tend to rely on their highly developed sense of colour to locate rewarding flowers, while moths have evolved sophisticated olfactory systems towards the same end. However, these modalities can interact in complex ways; for instance, butterflies’ colour preference can (...) shift depending on olfactory context. The mechanisms by which such cross‐modal interaction occurs are poorly understood, but the mushroom bodies appear to play a central role. Because of the diversity seen within Lepidoptera in terms of their sensory capabilities and the nature of their relationships with flowers, they represent a fruitful avenue for comparative studies to shed light on the co‐evolution of flowers and flower‐visiting insects. (shrink)

Purpose This study aims to examine the long-term effects of an Israeli digital literacy government program for disadvantaged populations, as they are perceived by participants of the program one year after completing the course. Design/methodology/approach Participants in the program were interviewed about the effects of participating in the program, their experiences and satisfaction, in retrospect, a year after they completed the program. Findings The main reasons for joining the program included cognitive motivations, mainly interest to become familiar with internet applications, (...) followed by employment aspiration. Positive benefits from participation included accumulated knowledge, confidence in using technology, empowerment and enhanced sense of self-efficacy. Interviewees also reported that as they could not practice or communicate with instructors once they completed the program, a significant portion of the accumulated gains faded. Social implications Social and practical implications: Digital technologies constitute key infrastructure to facilitate public participation, as well as for gaining social, political and economic capital. Therefore, there is a significant social value in reducing digital inequality by increasing digital literacy of disadvantaged populations, i.e. citizens with low socioeconomic status and low digital literacy. This study sheds light on the benefits gained from such programs, as perceived by past participants. Originality/value While previous studies evaluating digital literacy programs focus on specific technical improvements and short-term gains, this study investigates the long-term effects and shortcomings of the program as perceived by participants. (shrink)

Essays on the sayings of Sikh devotees included in Ādi-Granth, Sikha Canon.

Three thousand belligerents, mostly belonging to the military arm of Hamas, stormed Southern Israel on October 7th, 2023. Along with 3,000 rockets fired at Israel from Gaza, these belligerents inva...

I embark on the writing of this short note not as an expert in ethics or a seasoned war analyst but rather as an involved observer nudged into the spotlight by a colleague’s overestimation of my insight into the Israel–Hamas conflict. I approach this task with scepticism yet hoping to morph it into a form of therapy. My own therapy, a means to break the shackles of silence that have gripped not only myself but, I suspect, many others in Israel.

ExcerptIn 1959, C. P. Snow delivered the Rede Lecture on “The Two Cultures.”1 Snow’s fundamental point was that humanists and scientists speak past each other, assuming that they communicate at all. “[I]ntellectual life,” Snow writes, “is increasingly being split into two polar groups.” At one end, “literary intellectuals,” at the other, “scientists,” and between the two “a gulf of mutual incomprehension—sometimes (particularly among the young) hostility and dislike, but most of all lack of understanding.” Scientists don’t read any imaginative literature (...) because it has no practical application; and humanists ignore science because they think it is “of no interest either in its own value or its consequences.” The result is a split that does nobody any good. (shrink)

Robert Fogelin formulated the thesis “that deep disagreements cannot be resolved through the use of argument, for they undercut the conditions essential to arguing.” The possibility of arguing presupposes “a shared background of beliefs and preferences,” and if such a background is not given, there is no way of “rational” dispute resolution. By contrast to this pessimistic view, I will propose a method that has been developed to overcome difficulties as described by Fogelin.

jild 1. Majmūʻah-i maqālāt-i iraʼah shudah -- jild 2. Majmūʻah-i maqālāt-i rasīdah.

Music education can alleviate students’ psychological stress and play a positive role in the healthy growth and development of students. Synaesthesia theory is a relatively special cognitive phenomenon that can achieve connections between different sensory organs. Colour psychology can influence the change of mental state through the change of vision. In this study, synaesthesia theory and colour psychology were applied to music education, and the traditional music education method was used as the contrast method to set up the experiment. The (...) article focuses on the experimental results with regard to the Hamilton anxiety scale (HAMA) score of the use of traditional music by students. It shows that the music education mode integrating synaesthesia theory and colour psychology can better improve the classroom quality of music education, so as to better relieve the pressure of students and promote their healthy, happy and positive growth. Contribution: Difficult learning tasks add pressure to the student’s learning capabilities, which leads to psychological problems such as anxiety and stress. Music education can relax students’ nerves and psychology, so as to relieve students’ psychological pressure. The research applies synaesthesia theory and colour psychology to music education to improve the classroom quality of music, so as to better alleviate student pressures and promote healthy, happy and positive growth. This research represents data, which can be utilised by scholars in the field of religious education and public theology. (shrink)

Hamas’s deliberate attack on October 7th against innocent civilians is absolutely wrong. Therefore, it should be universally condemned. And yet, I wonder how a universal recognition of an absolute duty of respect for human dignity can help solving the existential conflict confronting Israelis and Palestinians. Ideally, a two-state solution proposed by the international community can be seen as a reasonable and fair compromise. Nevertheless, the reality on the ground is different. Thus far the existence of one state has precluded the (...) existence of another with no end in sight to their mutually destructive violence. Their conflict demands that people who are reasonable and fair-minded try to understand it holistically and to offer an impartial assessment of this intractable conflict without relativizing the undeserved human suffering of all those involved and affected by it. (shrink)

El ataque deliberado de Hamás el 7 de octubre contra civiles inocentes es absolutamente inicuo. Por lo tanto, debe ser condenado universalmente. Y, sin embargo, me pregunto cómo un reconocimiento universal de un deber absoluto de respeto por la dignidad humana puede ayudar a resolver el conflicto existencial al que se enfrentan israelíes y palestinos. Idealmente, una solución de dos Estados propuesta por la comunidad internacional puede ser vista como un compromiso razonable y justo. Sin embargo, la realidad sobre el (...) terreno es diferente. Hasta ahora, la existencia de un Estado ha impedido la existencia de otro, sin que se vislumbre el final de su violencia mutuamente destructiva. Su conflicto exige que las personas razonables e imparciales traten de entenderlo de manera holística y de ofrecer una evaluación justa de este conflicto insoluble sin relativizar el sufrimiento humano inmerecido de todos los involucrados y afectados por él. (shrink)

Hamas militants have raped and mutilated the bodies of dozens of men and women in Israel during their attack and captivity in Gaza. The exact extent of these atrocities, however, is unknown. For reasons of this sort and others, prosecuting sexual abusers during armed conflicts is notoriously difficult. In an attempt to make a legal case against Hamas militants, the Israeli authorities have recently ordered civilian hospitals to breach medical confidentiality and report unidentified data of patients who have suffered bodily (...) mutilation and sexual abuse during the Hamas attack or during captivity in Gaza. Patients were not informed about this policy. This article first establishes a case for why medical confidentiality is such an important existential and normative value. In this light, it then argues that the Israeli policy is morally unjustified. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the current war on Gaza in 2024 that followed the Hamas attack on October 7th 2023, reading the events is a wider historical context. The paper has three main parts. In the first part, the paper argues against the fragmentation of the question of Palestine historically and geographically, arguing instead for the importance of the overall context of the conflict. The second part considers the issue of Palestinian resistance. How can the Palestinians resist occupation? This part (...) is mainly descriptive and indicates the impasse that the Palestinians found themselves in it after the Oslo accords in 1993. The third and last part moves to normative questions regarding the question of self-defense both on the part of the Palestinians and on the part of Israel and tries to outline the ways these arguments can develop. (shrink)

The primary goal of this chapter is to present a new method—called Logical Argument Mapping —for the analysis of framing processes as they occur in any communication, but especially in conflicts. I start with a distinction between boundary setting, meaning construction, and sensemaking as three forms or aspects of framing, and argue that crucial for the resolution of frame-based controversies is our ability to deal with those “webs” of mutually supporting beliefs that determine sensemaking processes. Since any analysis of framing (...) in conflicts and communication is itself influenced by sensemaking—there is no “frame-neutrality”—the main problem for an analyst is to cope with his or her own cognitive limitations. LAM offers a solution to this problem. The method will be exemplified with an analysis of two conflicting interpretations of how the international community should deal with Hamas after its election victory in 2006. (shrink)

The trauma of the October 7 massacre for Israelis and the catastrophe that Gazans have experienced in the subsequent war mark a new stage in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. While October 7 and indeed the Israeli response are exceptional, we cannot overcome their consequences without addressing the root of the conflict. Calls for an immediate ceasefire are understandable but fall into the trap of seeing the solution as being a military decision. This echoes to the attitude of the current Israeli government (...) which poses the response to October 7 as a military one. A new international political initiative is required to change the atmosphere by setting the goal of resolving the conflict on the basis of self-determination for both Israelis and Palestinians. That needs to inform the approach we adopt to ending the current conflict by replacing Hamas and Israel in Gaza with an international security mechanism. (shrink)

Bioethical arguments conceal the coercion underlying the choice between poverty and selling ones organsIn mid-May 2006, three Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel applied to the Israeli Prison Service for permission to sell their kidneys in order to send money to their children for food. Whether truly sincere or merely propagandistic, the request was made against the background of Israel’s decision to suspend the transfer of Palestinian tax moneys to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, and the subsequent increasing poverty and famine in (...) the Gaza Strip.1An official decision was yet to be made when this paper was written. However, the IPS chief medical officer had already made it clear that the request is likely to be rejected. Aside from emphasising that the cost of the pertinent treatment of the prisoners could not be imposed on the IPS, especially as it would greatly exceed the sum to be obtained by the sellers , he asserted that the IPS “won’t lend a hand to endangering the prisoner”. He also reiterated the official IPS policy, according to which the prisoners’ consent to such transaction could not be valid, since they might have been threatened by people from inside or outside the prison.1This is ironic. While the IPS’ professed concerns for the welfare and best interests of the prisoners are commendable, they conceal and hence reaffirm the real coercion implicit in the dilemma the prisoners face: to sell their kidney or let their children starve. Interestingly, approval of their request would have equally concealed the coercion, this time behind concerns for either their autonomy, or the welfare of their children, or both.At present, it is unlikely that Israel will acknowledge the role of national oppression and poverty in producing this dilemma. Rather, the debate will remain focused on …. (shrink)

Is it moral to sacrifice one's life for a higher goal? Why do many in the U.S. think it admirable to join the army but despicable for Palestinians to sign up with Hamas? How can we actually determine "evil" and "good" in the daily world? These practical questions cut to the heart of what it means to be human. John Ralston Saul, in his matter-of-fact discussion of six basic human qualities — ethics, common sense, intuition, imagination, memory, and reason — (...) confronts basic concepts in a manner not done since Thomas Paine more than two centuries ago. In an easy-to-understand style, Saul explains why essential qualities of being human cannot exist in isolation but instead depend on and enrich each other. On Equilibrium persuasively explores morality and how it can be used to foster equilibrium for the self and achieve an ethical society. (shrink)

Excerpt“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “We don’t want no two states, we want 1948” are two of the slogans that have been heard on American campuses during the protests in recent weeks. These reflect the idea that Israel should be replaced by a Palestinian-Arab state and violence should be used to achieve this goal if necessary. While much of the discourse since October 7 has focused on the nature of Hamas’s attack—the rapes, the burnings, (...) the shootings—not enough has been written on what it actually sought to achieve. (shrink)