This article describes a descriptive-qualitative method for analyzing and reviewing several textbooks for high school as samples commonly used by teachers and students in their teaching–learning to reveal possible misconceptions. This study focused on the subjects of quantum numbers and electronic configuration. From the advanced literature review to analyze the samples the occurrence of various misconceptions was noted. All textbooks described correctly the four symbols of quantum numbers, but none correlates correctly the magnetic-angular quantum number to the Cartesian labeled orbitals. (...) All textbooks consider mistakenly the meaning of aufbau as the building-up energy of orbitals by following (n + ℓ, n) rules on describing the electronic configuration for all atoms. Only one textbook states that the electronic configuration of transition metal atoms (3d series) can be described in the following order of shell (n), thus giving rise to two types of electronic configurations, [Ar] 3d 4s (Type I) beside [Ar] 4s 3d (Type II), leading further misconception. All textbooks described favorably an unpaired electron of ms = + ½ due to the specific agreement, which is a potential misconception in applying Hund’s rule. In drawing the diagram boxes of orbitals, they are arranged in increasing or decreasing the numeric mℓ, due to the specific agreement, and again leading to a potential misconception on describing the quantum number of electrons issued. Three textbooks introduced the terms of the last and the xth electron associated with the quantum numbers, leading to serious further misconceptions. No books stated that the ordering energy of the (n + ℓ, n) rule is true only for the first twenty atoms. (shrink)

Uma Narayan attempts to clarify what the feminist notion of the 'epistemic privilege of the oppressed' does and does not imply. She argues that the fact that oppressed 'insiders' have epistemic privilege regarding their oppression creates problems in dialogue with and coalitionary politics involving 'outsiders' who do not share the oppression, since the latter fail to come to terms with the epistemic privilege of the insiders. She concretely analyzes different ways in which the emotions of insiders can be inadvertantly (...) hurt by outsiders and suggests ways in which such problems can be minimized. (shrink)

_Dislocating Cultures_ takes aim at the related notions of nation, identity, and tradition to show how Western and Third World scholars have misrepresented Third World cultures and feminist agendas. Drawing attention to the political forces that have spawned, shaped, and perpetuated these misrepresentations since colonial times, Uma Narayan inspects the underlying problems which "culture" poses for the respect of difference and cross-cultural understanding. Questioning the problematic roles assigned to Third World subjects within multiculturalism, Narayan examines ways in which (...) the flow of information across national contexts affects our understanding of issues. _Dislocating Cultures_ contributes a philosophical perspective on areas of ongoing interest such as nationalism, post-colonial studies, and the cultural politics of debates over tradition and "westernization" in Third World contexts. (shrink)

In responding to this debate, Ananth both surveys the existing literature, with special focus on the work of Christopher Boorse, and argues that a naturalistic ...

The essays in this volume bring to their focuses on philosophical issues the new angles of vision created by the multicultural, global, and postcolonial feminisms that have been developing around us.

Drawing parallels between gender essentialism and cultural essentialism, I point to some common features of essentialist pictures of culture. I argue that cultural essentialism is detrimental to feminist agendas and suggest strategies for its avoidance. Contending that some forms of cultural relativism buy into essentialist notions of culture, I argue that postcolonial feminists need to be cautious about essentialist contrasts between "Western" and "Third World" cultures.

The primary question this article deals with is one of ontology. In a dystopian world populated with genetically engineered windups and hybrids, what constitutes ‘the human’? This article looks at how the posthuman body in a dystopian novel like The Windup Girl, set in a world where geographical, political, social, economic and religious norms and boundaries are erased and reconfigured, can in no way simply remain a mere body, but transmutes into a highly complex political and social site from whence (...) multiple relations of power originate, travel and culminate in. The titular character in the novel, Emiko, is a genetically engineered windup created in a laboratory, with obedience and the need to please etched right into her DNA. This makes her a prized possession for a brothel owner in Bangkok, once her Japanese master abandons her. She is both desirable and revolting to her customers at the same time – her perfect body is too perfect, her genetic urge to please at any cost draws them in, but her involuntary shaking and robot-like jerking disgusts them. The windup can thus be seen as both the Lacanian object cause of desire and Kristeva’s abject body. (shrink)

_Bringing Biology to Life _is a guided tour of the philosophy of biology, canvassing three broad areas: the early history of biology, from Aristotle to Darwin; traditional debates regarding species, function, and units of selection; and recent efforts to better understand the human condition in light of evolutionary biology. Topics are addressed using no more technical jargon than necessary, and without presupposing any advanced knowledge of biology or the philosophy of science on the part of the reader. Discussion questions are (...) also provided to encourage reader reflection. (shrink)

Jonathan Lear argues that the established purgation, purification, and cognitive stimulation interpretations of Aristotle’s concepts of catharsis and tragic pleasure are off the mark. In response, Lear defends an anti-cognitivist account, arguing that it is the pleasure associated with imaginatively “living life to the full” and yet hazarding nothing of importance that captures Aristotle’s understanding of catharsis and tragic pleasure. This analysis reveals that Aristotle’s account of imagination in conjunction with his understanding of both specific intellectual virtues and rational emotions (...) of an educated citizen not only tells against Lear’s anti-cognitivist construal, but also divulges an alternative cognitive stimulation reading. (shrink)

This paper defends the position that the supposed gap between biological altruism and psychological altruism is not nearly as wide as some scholars (e.g., Elliott Sober) insist. Crucial to this defense is the use of James Mark Baldwin's concepts of “organic selection”and “social heredity” to assist in revealing that the gap between biological and psychological altruism is more of a small lacuna. Specifically, this paper argues that ontogenetic behavioral adjustments, which are crucial to individual survival and reproduction, are also crucial (...) to species survival. In particular, it is argued that human psychological altruism is produced and maintained by various sorts of mimicry and self-reflection in the aid of both individual and species survival. The upshot of this analysis is that it is possible to offer an account of psychological altruism that is closelytethered to biological altruism without reducing entirely the former to thelatter. (shrink)

Previous accounts of how people develop expertise have focused on how deliberate practice transforms the cognitive and perceptual representations and processes that give rise to expertise. However, the likelihood of developing expertise with a particular tool may also depend on the degree to which that tool fits pre‐existing perceptual and cognitive abilities. The present studies explored whether the abacus—a descendent of the first human computing devices—may have evolved to exploit general biases in human visual attention, or whether developing expertise with (...) the abacus requires learning special strategies for allocating visual attention to the abacus. To address this question, we administered a series of visual search tasks to abacus experts and subjects who had little to no abacus experience, in which search targets and distractors were overlaid atop abacus “beads.” Across three studies, we found that both experts and naïve subjects were faster to detect targets in semantically relevant components of the abacus, suggesting that abacus training is not required to exhibit attentional biases toward these components of the abacus. This finding suggests that the attentional biases that scaffold numerical processing of the abacus may emerge from general properties of visual attention that are exploited by the design of the abacus itself. (shrink)

I point to a colonial care discourse that enabled colonizers to define themselves in relationship to "inferior" colonized subjects. The colonized, however, had very different accounts of this relationship. While contemporary care discourse correctly insists on acknowledging human needs and relationships, it needs to worry about who defines these often contested terms. I conclude that improvements along dimensions of care and of justice often provide "enabling conditions" for each other.

Both before and after the publication of Isaac Newton’s particulate theory of light, numerous wave theories of light were advanced by both philosophers and scientists (e.g., René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Robert Hooke, Francesco Grimaldi, and Christiaan Huygens). What is peculiar about this list, as frequently found in the scholarly literature on light, is that it refers to individuals who do not extend much further back than the seventeenth century. A close examination of Aristotle’s account of color and light in comparison (...) to Christiann Huygens’ theory of color and light, however, reveals that Aristotle deserves to be recognized as one who antedates and foreshadows these modern wave theorists. Indeed, we shall argue that Aristotle offered the first wave theory of color and light. On Aristotle’s theory, light is the actualization of a transparent medium such as air or water that makes possible the dissemination of color through the medium in a manner analogous to the dissemination of sound through air or water. (shrink)

U.G. Krishnamurti famously described enlightenment as a neurobiological state of being with no religious, psychological or mystical implications. He did not lecture, did not set up organizations, held no gatherings and professed to have no message for mankind. Known as the 'anti-guru', the 'raging sage' and the 'thinker who shuns thought', U.G. spent his life destroying accepted beliefs in science, god, mind, soul, religion, love and relationships-all the props man uses to live life. Having taken away all support systems from (...) those who came to him, he refused to replace them with those of his own, always insisting that each must find his own truth. And when U.G. knew that it was time for him to go, he refused all attempts to prolong life with medical help. He let nature, and his body, take its course. On the afternoon of 22 March 2007, U.G. Krishnamurti passed away in Vallecrosia, Italy. A bare, intensely personal account of a bedside vigil with the dying, A Taste of Life records the final days that well-known film-maker Mahesh Bhatt spent with U.G. Krishnamurti. It narrates how, in death, U.G. shows the author and us a way to live life. Book jacket. (shrink)

Huey P. Newton remains one the left’s intellectual enigmas. Although lauded for being the leader of the Black Panther Party, Newton is relatively unacknowledged as an intellectual. This article challenges the neglect of Newton’s thought by shedding light on his theory of empire, and the present-day value of returning to his thought. The article centres on how Newton’s critique of what he called ‘reactionary intercommunalism’ prefigures many of the elements found in the work of Hardt and Negri on empire. This (...) comparison will be used to show how Newton not only foresaw elements of the rise of contemporary neoliberal globalization, but also offered an idea of political solidarity and revolutionary politics for such a context. The article concludes by highlighting how Newton’s ideas about the need for a war of position based on ‘survival pending revolution’ presents a more theoretically and empirically salient conceptualization of resistance than his successors. (shrink)

Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin have argued that the best way to resolve complex “moral” issues in clinical settings is to focus on the details of specific cases. This approach to medical decision-making, labeled ‘casuistry’, has met with much criticism in recent years. In response to this criticism, Carson Strong has attempted to salvage much of Jonsen’s and Toulmin’s version of casuistry. He concludes that much of their analysis, including Jonsen’s further elaboration about the casuistic methodology, is on the mark. (...) In this essay, the details of Jonsen’s and Toulmin’s version of casuistry and the major criticisms against their approach to clinical decision-making are explicated. Furthermore, it is argued that Strong’s salvage efforts fail to deflect these criticisms. The upshot of this analysis, which includes a few additional criticisms, is that Jonsen’s and Toulmin’s version of casuistry is not an appropriate framework from which to resolve complex “moral” issues in clinical settings. (shrink)

Defenders of evolutionary medicine claim that medical professionals and public health officials would do well to consider the role of evolutionary biology with respect to the teaching, research, and judgments pertaining to medical theory and practice. An integral part of their argument is that the human body should be understood as a bundle of evolutionary compromises. Such an appreciation, which includes a proper understanding of biological function and physiological homeostasis, would provide a crucial perspective regarding the understanding and securing of (...) human health needs currently lacking in the medical arena. (shrink)

John Searle offers what he thinks to be a reasonable scientific approach to the understanding of consciousness. I argue that Searle is demanding nothing less than a Kuhnian-type revolution with respect to how scientists should study consciousness given his rejection of the subject-object distinction and affirmation of mental causation. As part of my analysis, I reveal that Searle embraces a version of emergentism that is in tension, not only with his own account, but also with some of the theoretical tenets (...) of science. I conclude that Searle has offered little to motivate scientists to adopt his proposal. (shrink)

In a recent commentary, Kim and colleagues argued that minimal-risk research should be deregulated so that such studies do not require review by an institutional review board. They claim that regulation of minimal-risk studies provides no adequate counterbalancing good and instead leads to a costly human subjects oversight system. We argue that the counterbalancing good of regulating minimal-risk studies is that oversight exists to ensure that respect for persons and justice requirements are satisfied when they otherwise might not be.

All activities which are taking place in the Cosmos also exist in a human body in subtle micro-scale. Plexuses centers in a human body are the most mysterious kinds of energies. The six-center plexus system is the path of the Kundalini shakti, the primordial cosmic energy of a person. Each plexus has its own propensities (vibrating words/dimensions/vritti) and an acoustic root. These plexuses control some cluster of words of sounds and corresponding physical organs in human body. The 50 main propensities (...) of the human’s unit mind are expressed through the vibration-expression of these plexuses. These vibrations cause hormones to secrete from the corresponding glands of the human’s body. These plexuses can play very important roles in curing the diseases. According to the Theory of Nikola Tesla’s 369, there are all together 1 to 9 digital root numbers exist. All other higher or lower numbers are the combination of those digital root numbers. This statement seems quite true when we compare it with Theory of Absolutivity. If 3, 6, 9 numbers are arranged together it makes a letter Ohm (AUM) which represents actually a Sagun Bramh/Nikola Tesla’s 369 triangle which is a part of NirgunBramh having higher dimensions. Number zero is the NirgunBramh (having all the qualities but in dormant form) which does not possess any quality in action. Number 3, 6, 9 forming as an equilateral triangle of static, mutative and sentient forces representing the Black-hole which is a part of Sagun Bramh projecting Himself as a Visible World through Big-bang along with forming five basic elements such as Ethereal, Areal, Fire, Liquid and Solid. According to the biological science, life emerged in this planet from matter about four billion years ago in the form of DNA that carried the software for the development of billion of species on the way to its final destination in humans. These facts also fully support the above hypothesis of universe formations. (shrink)

The present paper takes a critical posthumanist lens to study the consequences of rapid urbanisation of the Chinese landscape as presented in the short story ‘Good Hunting’, by Ken Liu. One of the main characters in the story is Yan, a huli jing (fox-spirit), whose ability to switch between her fox and human forms is severely impaired by the loss of remnant nature in China, and the subsequent erosion of the qi from the soil. It is not just the natural (...) landscape that undergoes a transformation during urbanisation – the remnants of nature do not remain untouched by this process. Beings like Yan, who continue to inhabit the place that used to be their home, do not remain the same that they were pre-urbanisation. The city changes them, moulds them in ways hitherto inconceivable, and they undergo this transmogrification of their bodies and their self in order to survive. The article draws out the historical relationship between urban spaces and (post)human bodies, with a specific focus on the Chinese body, drawing parallels between the ideals associated with the city and juxtaposing them with what it means to be posthuman. The paper also interrogates Yan’s status as a liminal entity before and after Hong Kong’s transformation, and her use of liminality as a survival strategy. (shrink)

Superman’s legendary powers include super‐strength, super‐speed, flight, invulnerability, x‐ray vision, heat vision, and super‐hearing. One would think those powers would be enough, but occasionally writers add new ones. This chapter considers one of his less common powers‐the ability to read minds‐and use some basic philosophical thinking about minds to ask why it never caught on as one of Supes's main powers. The chapter explains why, despite mind‐reading’s occasional usefulness, it would be philosophically prudent to eliminate it from Superman’s set of (...) powers. Given that Superman was born on Krypton and raised on Earth, there is no reason to think that he should be confident in guessing the mental states of other beings. (shrink)

The contemporary debate on the concept of health is a tug-of-war between naturalists and normativists. Although health can be valued or disvalued, naturalists argue that the concept of health is value-free. In contrast, normativists argue that the concept of health is value-laden. This dissertation examines this controversy focusing on the naturalistic concept of health defended by Christopher Boorse. Boorse claims that health and disease are value-free concepts in the sense that diseased and healthy states can be gleaned from the facts (...) of nature without an appeal to value judgments. ;The dissertation first examines Boorse's critical assessment of both the naturalist and normativist concepts of health that he rejects. Then there is a critical examination of the concept of function, which is crucial to his concept of health. Subsequently, an exegesis of Boorse's concept of health is provided. This is followed by an evaluation of the many replies by his critics and Boorse's rejoinder to them. Finally, a modified version of Boorse's concept of health is proposed taking into account some of the intractable difficulties with his theory. ;There are six main findings regarding Boorse's theory: First, Boorse successfully rejects the main normative concepts of health. Second, he is partially successful against specific naturalistic concepts of health. Third, Boorse's contextualist concept of function is not entirely persuasive. Fourth, Boorse's concept of health is persuasive because he qualifies it to accommodate differences in age, gender, and species type. Fifth, with respect to his critics, Boorse is inconsistent in his reliance on evolution and does not give a proper place to the environment in his account. Sixth, a modified version of Boorse's concept of health, which includes an evolutionary sense of function, homeostasis, and acknowledges environmental factors , is a more appropriate way to understand health. ;This dissertation arrives at three major conclusions: First, Boorse's concept of health is mainly successful in response to the normativists, but he should concede that epistemic norms are part of his concept of health. Second, an evolutionary concept of function is superior to Boorse's part-functionalist account. Third, a prominent place should be given to both homeostasis and environmental factors, along with the factors of age, sex, and species mentioned by Boorse. A modification of Boorse's account reflecting these conclusions will be a more defensible naturalistic concept of health. (shrink)

Biography of U.G. Krishnamurti, Indian philosopher.

A new construct, termed music receptivity, is introduced and discussed in this work. Music receptivity can be defined as a measure of the extent of internalization that an individual has, to a given piece of music, as measured at the point of listening. Through three studies, we demonstrate the psychometric properties of the construct—the Music Receptivity Scale. Exploratory factor analysis on a sample of 313 revealed good psychometric validity, with a four-factor solution, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.89, and a (...) two-factor solution, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.87. The tool also had a good test–retest reliability. Overall, the tool had 20 items in the long form and 12 items in the short version. The MRS could distinguish musicians and non-musicians supporting its discriminant validity. We have also discussed the implication of the MRS in the field of music psychology. (shrink)

Sex chromosomes are advantageous to mammals, allowing them to adopt a genetic rather than environmental sex determination system. However, sex chromosome evolution also carries a burden, because it results in an imbalance in gene dosage between females (XX) and males (XY). This imbalance is resolved by X dosage compensation, which comprises both X chromosome inactivation and X chromosome upregulation. X dosage compensation has been well characterized in the soma, but not in the germ line. Germ cells face a special challenge, (...) because genome wide reprogramming erases epigenetic marks responsible for maintaining the X dosage compensated state. Here we explain how evolution has influenced the gene content and germ line specialization of the mammalian sex chromosomes. We discuss new research uncovering unusual X dosage compensation states in germ cells, which we postulate influence sexual dimorphisms in germ line development and cause infertility in individuals with sex chromosome aneuploidy. (shrink)

Fifty-five documents in a western-Himalayan language dealing with land, pilgrimage, legality and temple-economy are presented. They explicate how ‘lesser states’ patronized numerous shrines and the role of Nath-Siddha-ascetics in creating consent-to-rule, and constructing hybridity between the Hindu and Tibetan-Buddhist traditions.

The Cosmos we live in consists of Invisible Prakriti and Visible World. In Visible World, we do live. All the galaxies, Milky Ways, nebulas and planets, stars, and physical bodies belong to this world are governed by the physical and mathematical laws of nature. Prakriti which is invisible spiritually governed and wave-formed existed even before the Big-Bang. Purush holds the Visible World and Prakriti around makes entire Cosmos in existence. Purush which is an absolutely positively charged and quality less with (...) no traces of negative portions always existed, neither being created nor destroyed. A fraction of a Purush known as Omega Point appears into the portion of Prakriti due to some causal effect for further expansion of the Visible World. Purush is situated in the middle of the cylindrical universe surrounded by the Prakriti and Visible World. Theories proposed by different scientists and philosophers to verify the Purush seem to be incomplete trial and error of the zigzag puzzle show. Today, our scientists, cosmologists, and mathematicians are trying to explain the function of the universe through only four physical dimensions of science, which seems to be incomplete without explaining the transcendental factors while dealing with the living bodies. (shrink)