[v. 1.] Vairaagya & mumukshu vyavahaara prakaranaas -- [v. 2.] Vutpaatti prakarana -- [v. 3.] Sustenance.

n this paper, I argue that political solidarity is important to justice. At its core, political solidarity is a relational concept. To be in a relation of political solidarity, is to be in a relation of connection or unity with one’s fellow citizens. I argue that fellow citizens can be said to stand in such a relation when they have attitudes of collective identification, mutual respect, mutual trust, and mutual support and loyalty toward one another. I argue that political solidarity, (...) so conceived, is an integral element of a theory of justice. I argue that there are distinctly social bases for political solidarity and that justice requires that we promote these. Furthermore, as an example of the sort of social and political arrangements that might encourage political solidarity, I discuss Canada’s response to the recent H1N1 pandemic and the failings of this response with respect to members of the Aboriginal community within Canada. I argue that ensuring that members of the Aboriginal community had equal access to the goods they needed to protect themselves against H1N1 infection would have promoted relations of political solidarity and, in turn, would have promoted justice more effectively. (shrink)

This essay develops an account of Martin Luther King Jr.’s justification for and use of what I will call “democratic propaganda”—truthful propaganda that is aimed at promoting and fostering democratic political action by stirring readers’ emotions. I interpret King’s famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in the broader context of his work and argue that it is a piece of democratic propaganda. I give an account of what led King to support the use of democratic propaganda and why he hoped it (...) would help to overcome a central problem in the civil rights movement: the political inaction of the white moderates. King emphasizes shame in the Letter, and I argue that this concept offers us a new way of thinking about the efficacy of democratic propaganda. I close by considering the relevance of King’s approach for today’s Black Lives Matter movement. Despite the innovativeness of King’s use of shame, I suggest it may be time for a new approach to Black politics and activism. (shrink)

Inspired by the eminently successful physical theories and informed by commonplace experiences such as seeing a cat upon looking at a cat, conscious experience is thought of as a measurement or photocopy of given stimulus. Conscious experience, unlike a photocopy, is symbolic—like language—in that the relation between conscious experience and physical stimulus is analogous to that of the word "cat" and its meaning, i.e., arbitrary and yet systematic. We present arguments against the photocopy model and arguments for a symbolic conception (...) of conscious experience. Learning and the corresponding plasticity of the brain make a strong case for the symbolic conception of conscious experience, while many extra-ordinary conscious experiences argue against the formalisation of consciousness as a measuring device. The notions of place-value notation and grammar, which organise quantitative measurements and conscious experiences in the medium of numbers and language, respectively, are suggested as model systems for putting together a comprehensive theory of conscious experience. (shrink)

This paper makes an argument for the democratic value of distrust. It begins by analyzing distrust, since distrust is not merely the negation of trust. The account that it develops is based primarily on Martin Luther King Jr.’s work in Why We Can’t Wait. On this view, distrust is the confident belief that another individual or group of individuals or an institution will not act justly or as justice requires. It is a narrow normative account of distrust, since it concerns (...) a specific normative task. Distinctions between vertical and horizontal distrust, as well as trust and agnostic trust are also discussed. This paper argues that distrust’s democratic value lies in its ability to secure democracy by protecting political minorities from having their voices ignored. As such, distrust can be viewed as a kind of Madisonian “check and balance” that works to prevent tyranny. Distrust also works to secure democracy by forging new or alternative forms of democratic participation. The main example discussed in this paper is King’s involvement in the Birmingham Campaign during the Black Civil Rights movement in America. In this case, King and his supporters’ distrust of fellow White citizens and political institutions led to alternative forms of political expression such as non-violent protests, boycotts, and other forms of civil disobedience, all of which led to greater racial justice by working to alleviate White tyranny. (shrink)

Despite the vast literature on Rawls's work, few have discussed his arguments for the value of democracy. When his arguments have been discussed, they have received staunch criticism. Some critics have charged that Rawls's arguments are not deeply democratic. Others have gone further, claiming that Rawls's arguments denigrate democracy. These criticisms are unsurprising, since Rawls's arguments, as arguments that the principle of equal basic liberty needs to include democratic liberties, are incomplete. In contrast to his trenchant remarks about core civil (...) liberties, Rawls does not say much about the inclusion of political liberties of a democratic sort – such as the right to vote – among the basic liberties. -/- In this paper, I complete some of Rawls's arguments and show that he has grounds for including political liberties, particularly those of a democratic nature, in the principle of equal basic liberty. In doing so, I make some beginning steps toward illustrating the genuinely democratic nature of Rawls's arguments. Rawls believes that a few different arguments can be given for democratic institutions and that these arguments work together to support the value of democracy. In this paper, I focus on Rawls's arguments relating to self-respect. I focus on this set of arguments because they are among the strongest of Rawls's arguments for equal political liberty and its fair value. (shrink)

What is cognition? Equivalently, what is cognition good for? Or, what is it that would not be but for human cognition? But for human cognition, there would not be science. Based on this kinship between individual cognition and collective science, here we put forward Isbell conjugacy---the adjointness between objective geometry and subjective algebra---as a scientific method for developing cognitive science. We begin with the correspondence between categorical perception and category theory. Next, we show how the Gestalt maxim is subsumed by (...) the mathematical construct of colimit, a generalization of summation. The universal mapping property definitions of mathematical constructs, by virtue of being the best with respect to the universe of discourse, can be learned using reinforcement learning algorithms, which raises the possibility of abstracting the architecture of mathematics by artificial intelligence. Subsequently, we present naturality (to be contrasted with miracles), understood as 'Becoming consistent with Being', which governs the transformations of both things and their theories, as the zeroth law of change. Furthermore, the contrast---physical [mechanism] vs. biological [organism]---is smoothed via natural transformation, wherein transformations are respectful of the cohesion of the objects transformed. In closing, upon recognizing the scientific value of learning difficult-to-master differential calculus by physicists, of learning a strange four-letter language by biologists, and of learning the grammar of our respective mother tongues, we make a case for learning the theory of naturality / category theory for developing cognitive science. (shrink)

It has been widely reported that women are underrepresented in academic philosophy as faculty and students. This article investigates whether this representation may also occur in the domain of journal article publishing. Our study looked at whether women authors were underrepresented as authors in elite ethics journals — Ethics, Philosophy & Public Affairs, the Journal of Political Philosophy, and the Journal of Moral Philosophy — between 2004-2014, relative to the proportion of women employed in academic ethics (broadly construed). We found (...) that women are indeed underrepresented overall in prestigious ethics journal publishing. Though this is not our focus, we discuss possible causes for this finding, such as top ethics journals’ tendency not to publish much feminist philosophy; the impact of women’s lesser professional status or rank within philosophy on their prospects for, and success in, journal publishing; and the review process itself, which may disadvantage or discourage women authors — perhaps especially when their gender, rank, and affiliation are known to the editor or reviewer, or if their work is explicitly feminist. We discuss possible avenues for future research on the "woman problem" in philosophy, noting how our study relates to existing research on this issue. (shrink)

Few have discussed Rawls's arguments for the value of democracy. This is because his arguments, as arguments that the principle of equal basic liberty should include democratic liberties, are incomplete. Rawls says little about the inclusion of political liberties of a democratic sort – such as the right to vote – among the basic liberties. And, at times, what he does say is unconvincing. My aim is to complete and, where they fail, to reconceive Rawls's arguments and to show that (...) a principle requiring equal political liberty and its fair value is an appropriate component of his theory of justice. (shrink)

In December 2006, Indonesia decided to stop sending influenza virus specimens to the World Health Organization’s Global Influenza Surveillance Network (GISN). Indonesia justified its actions by claiming that they were in protest of the injustice of GISN. Its actions stimulated negotiations to improve the workings of GISN by developing and implementing a more just framework for ‘sharing influenza viruses and other benefits’. These negotiations eventually led to the adoption of a new framework for virus and benefit sharing in May 2011, (...) at the World Health Assembly meeting. In this article, we critically evaluate Indonesia’s claims about the unjustness of GISN. We show that arguments based on the values of ownership, contribution and reciprocity work together to support Indonesia’s claim that it was owed an equal share in the benefits of GISN and, in turn, that GISN was unjust because of its failure to ensure this. We also use these values to evaluate the newly agreed upon framework for virus and benefit sharing. We suggest the new framework fails to give proper consideration to the values of ownership, contribution and reciprocity and, as a result, that it is fundamentally unjust. (shrink)

The Book Is The First Comparative And Critical Exploration Of The Chandogya Upnishad With Logical Strength Metaphysical Consistency And Enables The Discerning Reader To See And Appreciate The Prine Metaphysical Value Of The Upanishad.

This paper is concerned with the combinator representation of numeral systems with logarithmic space complexity of symbols. The principle used is based on the lexicographic ordering of words over a finite alphabet.

Comparative study of yoga philosophy of Vemana, Telugu poet and Vijñānabhairava, Hindu Tantric text.

Notions such as śūnyatā, catuṣkoṭi, and Indra's net, which figure prominently in Buddhist philosophy, are difficult to readily accommodate within our ordinary thinking about everyday objects. Famous Buddhist scholar Nāgārjuna considered two levels of reality: one called conventional reality, and the other ultimate reality. Within this framework, śūnyatā refers to the claim that at the ultimate level objects are devoid of essence or "intrinsic properties", but are interdependent by virtue of their relations to other objects. Catuṣkoṭi refers to the claim (...) that four truth values, including contradiction, are admissible in reasoning. Indra's net refers to the claim that every part of a whole is reflective of the whole. Here we present category theoretic constructions that are reminiscent of these Buddhist concepts. The universal mapping property definition of mathematical objects, wherein objects of a universe of discourse are defined not in terms of their content, but in terms of their relations to all objects of the universe is reminiscent of śūnyatā. The objective logic of perception, with perception modeled as [a category of] two sequential processes (sensation followed by interpretation), and with its truth value object of four truth values, is reminiscent of the Buddhist logic of catuṣkoṭi. The category of categories, wherein every category has a subcategory of sets with zero structure within which every category can be modeled, is reminiscent of Indra's net. Our thorough elaboration of the parallels between Buddhist philosophy and category theory can facilitate better understanding of Buddhist philosophy, and bring out the broader philosophical import of category theory beyond mathematics. (shrink)

Our conscious experiences are qualitative and unitary. The qualitative universals given in particular experiences, i.e. qualia, combine into the seamless unity of our conscious experience. The problematics of quality and cohesion are not unique to consciousness studies. In mathematics, the study of qualities (e.g., shape) resulting from quantitative variations in cohesive spaces led to the axiomatization of cohesion and quality. Using the mathematical definition of quality, herein we model qualia space as a categorical product of qualities. Thus modeled qualia space (...) is a codomain space wherein composite qualities (e.g. shape AND color) of conscious experiences can be valued. As part of characterizing the qualia space, we provide a detailed exemplification of the mathematics of quality and cohesion in terms of the categories of idempotents and reflexive graphs. More specifically, with qualities as commutative triangles formed of cohesion-preserving functors, first we calculate the product of commutative triangles. Next, we explicitly show that the category of idempotents is a quality type. Lastly, as part of showing that the category of reflexive graphs is cohesive, we characterize the adjointness between functors relating cohesive graphs to discrete sets. In conclusion, our category theoretic construction of qualia space is a formalization of the binding of qualitative features (colors and shapes) into the cohesive objects (colored-shapes) of conscious experiences. Compared to the feature-vector accounts of conscious experiences, our product-of-qualities account of consciousness is a substantial theoretical advance. (shrink)

L.A. Paul has recently argued that, on the standard model of rationality, individuals cannot make rational decisions about whether to have a child or not. In this paper, I show that Paul’s arguments do not plausibly demonstrate that the standard model of rationality precludes rational decisions to have a child. I argue that there are phenomenal and non-phenomenal values that can be used to determine the value that having a child will have for us and, in turn, that can be (...) used to make rational decisions about whether to have a child or not. I also argue that we can have an approximate idea of what it is like for us to have a child, even before we have a child and that, on the standard model, this is sufficient to make rational decisions to have a child. (shrink)

This essay discusses a prominent definition of universal concomitance in the Nyäya School of Classical Indian Philosophy. This définition holds that universal concomitance is equivalent to the absence of undercutting conditions. It will be shown that though this definition seems to be inadequate, there is an auxiliary condition that may be added which makes the equivalence between universal concomitance and the absence of undercutting conditions deductively correct. It will then be shown that this auxiliary condition fits well into the Nyäya (...) foundations of logic and that furthermore this auxiliary condition does not unreasonably restrict the applicability of the definition of universal concomitance as the absence of undercutting conditions. Hence, the conclusion is that this interpretation is a good candidate for how the definition of universal concomitance as the absence of undercutting conditions should be understood. (shrink)

In this chapter, my main aim is to explore some of the central moral critiques of international financial institutions as well as proposals to overcome the moral problems that they face.

Through an analysis of the moral relationship between people and place, this paper offers a new view of the wrongful character of gentrification, which is pluralistic, locating the wrong in the non-fulfillment of three place-related rights: rights to a home, rights of residency, and place-based rights to a community. By focusing on the multiple ways that people are connected to place, we offer a more complete and systematic account of place-related rights that is not only able to make sense of (...) people’s lived experiences of the harms of gentrification but is also able to address standard criticisms, which have been made of other key accounts of the wrong of gentrification. (shrink)

Our manuscript addresses the foundational question of cognitive science: how do we know? Specifically, examination of the mathematics of acquiring mathematical knowledge revealed that knowing-within-mathematics is reflective of knowing-in-general. Based on the correspondence between ordinary cognition (involving physical stimuli, neural sensations, mental concepts, and conscious percepts) and mathematical knowing (involving objective particulars, measured properties, abstract theories, and concrete models), we put forward the functorial semantics of mathematical knowing as a formalization of cognition. Our investigation of the similarity between mathematics and (...) cognition led us to argue against the compartmentalization of scientific knowledge and ordinary cognition, and make a case for the understanding of the basic science of knowing in terms of functorial semantics. Recognizing functorial semantics as an elementary form of cognition can help advance cognitive science the way calculus helped in the advancement of physics. (shrink)

Journal Name: The Law & Ethics of Human Rights Issue: Ahead of print.

Cognition involves physical stimulation, neural coding, mental conception, and conscious perception. Beyond the neural coding of physical stimuli, it is not clear how exactly these component processes constitute cognition. Within mathematical sciences, category theory provides tools such as category, functor, and adjointness, which are indispensable in the explication of the mathematical calculations involved in acquiring mathematical knowledge. More speci cally, functorial semantics, in showing that theories and models can be construed as categories and functors, respectively, and in establishing the adjointness (...) between abstraction (of theories) and interpretation (to obtain models), mathematically accounts for knowing-within-mathematics. Here we show that mathematical knowing recapitulates--in an elementary form--ordinary cognition. The process of going from particulars (physical stimuli) to their concrete models (conscious percepts) via abstract theories (mental concepts) and measured properties (neural coding) is common to both mathematical knowing and ordinary cognition. Our investigation of the similarity between knowing-within-mathematics and knowing-in-general leads us to make a case for the development of the basic science of cognition in terms of the functorial semantics of mathematical knowing. (shrink)

Notions such as Sunyata, Catuskoti, and Indra's Net, which figure prominently in Buddhist philosophy, are difficult to readily accommodate within our ordinary thinking about everyday objects. Famous Buddhist scholar Nagarjuna considered two levels of reality: one called conventional reality and the other ultimate reality. Within this framework, Sunyata refers to the claim that at the ultimate level objects are devoid of essence or "intrinsic properties", but are interdependent by virtue of their relations to other objects. Catuskoti refers to the claim (...) that four truth values, along with contradiction, are admissible in reasoning. Indra's Net refers to the claim that every part of a whole is reflective of the whole. Here we present category theoretic constructions which are reminiscent of these Buddhist concepts. The universal mapping property definition of mathematical objects, wherein objects of a universe of discourse are defined not in terms of their content, but in terms of their relations to all objects of the universe is reminiscent of Sunyata. The objective logic of perception, with perception modeled as [a category of] two sequential processes (sensation followed by interpretation), and with its truth value object of four truth values, is reminiscent of the Buddhist logic of Catuskoti. The category of categories, wherein every category has a subcategory of sets with zero structure within which every category can be modeled, is reminiscent of Indra's Net. Our thorough elaboration of the parallels between Buddhist philosophy and category theory can facilitate better understanding of Buddhist philosophy, and bring out the broader philosophical import of category theory beyond mathematics. (shrink)

We define consciousness as the category of all conscious experiences. This immediately raises the question: What is the essence in which every conscious experience in the category of conscious experiences partakes? We consider various abstract essences of conscious experiences as theories of consciousness. They are: (i) conscious experience is an action of memory on sensation, (ii) conscious experience is experiencing a particular as an exemplar of a general, (iii) conscious experience is an interpretation of sensation, (iv) conscious experience is referring (...) sensation to an object as its cause, and (v) conscious experience is a model of stimulus. Corresponding to each one of these theories we obtain a category of models of conscious experiences: (i) category of actions, (ii) category of idempotents, (iii) category of two sequential maps, (iv) category of brain-generalized figures, and (v) functor categories with intuition as base and conceptual repertoire as exponent, respectively. For each theory of consciousness we also calculate its truth value object and characterize the objective logic intrinsic to the corresponding category of models of consciousness experiences. (shrink)

Pricing drives three of the most important elements of firm success: revenue and profits, customer behavior and firm image. This book provides an introduction to the basic principles for thinking clearly about pricing. Unlike other marketing books on pricing, the authors use a more analytic approach and relate ideas to the basic principles of microeconomics. Rakesh Vohra and Lakshman Krishnamurthi also cover three areas in greater depth and provide more insight than may be gleaned from existing books: 1) the use (...) of auctions, 2) price discrimination and 3) pricing in a competitive environment. (shrink)

This work is an exposition of the philosophic conceptions basic to Mahayana Buddhism as found in the Maha-prajnaparamita-sastra a commentary on the Prajnaparamita-sutras and traditionally attributed to Nagarjuna. The sastra the earliest and most extensive work in this field is lost in its Sanskrit original and preserved only in a Chinese translation. Meaning of Sanskrit and Chinese terms are expounded concepts are made clear and supplementary materials are supplied in the notes. The study is prefixed with a short historical account (...) of the broad lines of Buddhist philosophy in its early stage. The aim of this work is to elucidate the meaning of the Middle Way, the way of comprehension. 'Everything stands in harmony with him who stands in harmony with Sunyata, which is not a rejection of existence or of understanding but of the misconstruction of the sense of the real or the error of misplaced absoluteness which is the origin of clinging and the root of conflict and suffering.'. (shrink)

A reliable medical image management must provide proper security for patient information. Protecting the medical information of the patients is a major concern in all hospitals. Digital watermarking is a procedure prevalently used to secure the confidentiality of medical information and maintain them, which upgrades patient health awareness. To protect the medical information, the robust and lossless patient medical information sharing system using crypto-watermarking method is proposed. The proposed system consists of two phases: (i) embedding and (ii) extraction. In this (...) paper, we securely share three types of patient information, medical image, electronic health record (EHR), and face image from one hospital to another hospital. Initially, all the three inputs are encrypted and the information is concordant. In order to enhance the robustness of the crypto-watermarking system, the obtained bit stream is compressed, and the compressed bit streams are embedded into the cover image. The same process is repeated for the extraction process. The experimentation result is carried out using different medical images with EHR, and the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is analyzed with the help of peak signal to noise ratio. (shrink)

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a controversial criterion for allocating scarce medical treatment has been defended and incorporated into policy: the criterion of equity. Equity-included allocation schemes prioritize, to some degree, patients from marginalized or historically disadvantaged racial/ethnic groups, or patients with low socioeconomic status, for scarce treatment. The use of such criteria has been most prominently defended in two ways: (1) as reflecting a risk factor for severe COVID-19, and thus as a way of tracking medical need, (...) and (2) as a form of remedial justice, viz. a way of redressing disparities in COVID outcomes that are caused by underlying unjust social conditions. Here, we delineate and critique those arguments. We argue that not only are such arguments unconvincing but also that there are compelling moral reasons to reject the sort of equity-included allocation schemes at issue. (shrink)

We define an appropriate analog of the Morley rank in a totally transcendental homogeneous model with type diagram D. We show that if RM[p] = α then for some 1 ≤ n < ω the type p has n, but not n + 1, distinct D-extensions of rank α. This is surprising, because the proof of the statement in the first-order case depends heavily on compactness. We also show that types over (D,ℵ₀)-homogeneous models have multiplicity (Morley degree) 1.

Our aim in this article is to define the difficulties that clinical ethics services encounter when they are asked to demonstrate the value a clinical ethics service (CES) could and should have for an institution and those it serves. The topic emerged out of numerous related presentations at the Un- Conference hosted by the Cleveland Clinic in August 2018 that identified challenges of articulating the value of clinical ethics work for hospital administrators. After a review these talks, it was apparent (...) that the field of clinical ethics may be at a crisis of sorts due to increased pressure to provide explicit measures to healthcare institutions to concretely demonstrate that CESs make a valuable difference in healthcare delivery. In this article, we grapple with how to satisfy the need for demonstrable value in a field in which metrics alone may not capture the scope of clinical ethics practice. We suggest that capturing the value of a CES has been difficult because the benefits of ethics consultation may be overt or attributable to the CES, but are often hidden due to the systems-level and process-oriented nature of clinical ethics work. Part of the difficulty in demonstrating the value of CESs is capturing and conveying all of the ways the integration of a CES throughout an institution positively affects patients, families, visitors, healthcare professionals, administrators, and the institution itself. Our aim is to (1) elucidate the multifaceted value added by a CES, including value that tends to be hidden and (2) suggest how to demonstrate value to others in a way that is not simplistic or reductionistic. (shrink)

There are three questions associated with Simpson’s Paradox (SP): (i) Why is SP paradoxical? (ii) What conditions generate SP?, and (iii) What should be done about SP? By developing a logic-based account of SP, it is argued that (i) and (ii) must be divorced from (iii). This account shows that (i) and (ii) have nothing to do with causality, which plays a role only in addressing (iii). A counterexample is also presented against the causal account. Finally, the causal and logic-based (...) approaches are compared by means of an experiment to show that SP is not basically causal. (shrink)

This piece outlines concrete cases of benefit sharing that occur in relation to the sharing of human (biological) samples. For example, it surveys Indonesia’s decision, in 2006, to stop sharing virus samples of H5N1 (avian influenza) with the WHO Global Influenza Surveillance Network (GISN). It also outlines some of the ethical issues that arise in these cases.