Bekenstein proposed that the spectrum of horizon area of quantized black holes must be discrete and uniformly spaced. We examine this proposal in the context of spherically symmetric charged black holes in a general class of gravity theories. By imposing suitable boundary conditions on the reduced phase space of the theory to incorporate the thermodynamic properties of these black holes and then performing a simplifying canonical transformation, we are able to quantize the system exactly. The resulting spectra of horizon area, (...) as well as that of charge are indeed discrete. Within this quantization scheme, near-extremal black holes (of any mass) turn out to be highly quantum objects, whereas extremal black holes do not appear in the spectrum, a result that is consistent with the postulated third law of black hole thermodynamics. (shrink)

Language is always directed to Reality whatever its nature may be. The valuable articles incorporated in this book examine the following questions in particular:? What is relation between Language and Reality??What are different dimensions of Reality? Can all types of Reality be expressed through language??Can the relation between Language and Reality be explained as internal or external??Can meaning of Language be equated with its existence?All the contributors of this Volume have discussed at length, the relation between Language and Reality from (...) the Eastern as well as Western perspectives. This volume is the result of intensive and matured thinking of the scholars working in this field for a longer period of time. (shrink)

The author was a Bengali officer of India's Foreign Service. On his first foreign assignment during 1948 - 1954, he came across rare manuscripts at the National Library in Bangkok covering Rabindranath Tagore's visit to Thailand in October 1927. Having learnt the Thai language and being a Tagore aficionado, this discovery was fortuitous. "As the Poet travelled mostly without a stenographer, a great many of his speeches would have been lost to posterity. Reports about the Siam visit available in India (...) then were extremely sketchy..... Besides the material on the Poets visit to Thailand, this book contains some other important documents not readily available. The main treatise is split into four chapters: Time to Awake: A Poets Warning, Tagores Conception of History, Message to Asia And Africa and The Toiler for Peace. These chapters show what Tagore considered to be the biggest problem of human history, how he warned humanity for more than half a century against the problems and perils into which the world has been thrown today, what remedies he suggested to counter them. The author also condensed the Poet's ideas about civilisation and culture, freedom, power, diplomacy, colonialism, military alliances, racial prejudice and nationalism." This book, when first published during the Poet's centenary celebrations in 1961, provided for the first time a full account of that visit. It has since been a reference source for many Indian and international scholars on Tagore, with citations in their publications. With increased attention in recent years to Tagore's views on Nationalism, a republication for wider availability would benefit both readers and scholars on Tagore's view of global events during the inter-War period. This is the only republication of the book after sixty years. (shrink)

Cultural diversity is an inescapable reality and a concern in many businesses where it can often raise ethical questions and dilemmas. This paper aims to offer suggestions to certain problems facing managers in dealing with cultural diversity through the inspiration of Thomas Aquinas. Although he may be perceived as a voice from the distant past, we can still find in his writings helpful and original ideas and criteria. He welcomes cultural differences as a part of the perfection of the universe. (...) His systemic approach leads one to place the problem in its proper context, and to reflect on it from the perspective of virtue ethics, with a central role for practical wisdom and giving primacy to neighborly love and natural moral law. Rather than a set of rigid standards with no consideration of diversity Aquinas focuses on the common human ground, which allows for the indispensable dialogue between different positions. When dealing with practical questions, the problem is one of finding the right balance between general principle and cultural specifics, tolerance, and dialogue, always guided by practical wisdom. In this way, Aquinas’ approach is neither rigid ethical universalism with no consideration for diversity nor moral relativism with no place for any transcultural and absolute morals. (shrink)

We read with interest Dominic Wilkinson’s article “Frailty Triage: Is Rationing Intensive Medical Treatment on the Grounds of Frailty Ethical?” on the utility of the Clinical Frailty Score in...

Volume 19, Issue 6, June 2019, Page 34-36.

A ‘companions in guilt’ strategy against moral error theory aims to show that the latter proves too much: if sound, it supports an implausible error-theoretic conclusion in other areas such as epistemic or practical reasoning. Christopher Cowie [2016 Cowie, C. 2016. Good News for Moral Error Theorists: A Master Argument Against Companions in Guilt Strategies, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94/1: 115–30.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar]] has recently produced what he claims is a ‘master argument’ against (...) all such strategies. The essence of his argument is that CG arguments cannot work because they are afflicted by internal incoherence or inconsistency. I argue, first, that Cowie's master argument does not succeed. Beyond this, I argue that there is no good reason to think that any such argument—one that purports to identify an internal incoherence in CG arguments—can succeed. Second, I argue that the main substantive area of disagreement between error theorists and CG theorists essentially concerns the conceptual profile of epistemic reasons—specifically, whether they are strongly categorical—not the ontological question of whether such reasons exist. I then develop an argument in favour of the CG theorist's position by considering the moral error theorist's arguments in support of the conceptual claim that moral reasons are strongly categorical. These include, notably, criticisms made by Joyce [2011] and Olson [2014] of Finlay's [2008] ‘end relational’ view of morality, according to which moral reasons are relative to some end or standard, hence not strongly categorical. Examining these criticisms, I argue that, based on what moral error theorists have said regarding the conceptual profile of moral reasons, there is a strong case to be made that moral reasons are strongly categorical if and only if epistemic reasons are. (shrink)

How do senior business executives rank their preferences for various ethical principles? And how strongly do the executives believe in these principles? Also, how do these preference rankings relate to the way the executives see the future (wherein business decisions play out)? Research on these questions may provide us with an appreciation of the complexities of ethical behavior in management beyond the traditional issues concerning ethical decision-making in business. Based on a survey of 585 vice presidents of U.S. businesses it (...) was found that: (1) there is a distinct set of principles of ethical conduct that is considered favorable as opposed to another set considered unfavorable among a comprehensive list of 14 ethical principles; (2) the executives believed overwhelmingly that their own individual ethical preferences are better than those of other executives; (3) the strength of their preferences for ethical principles is associated with whether the executives are relatively near-future oriented or more distant-future oriented; and (4), there are very few significant differences in terms of gender, age, education level, private/public education, prestigious/other schools, business/non-business academic backgrounds, and length of job experience. Implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

According to Bayesian orthodoxy, an agent should update---or at least should plan to update---her credences by conditionalization. Some have defended this claim by means of a diachronic Dutch book argument. They say: an agent who does not plan to update her credences by conditionalization is vulnerable (by her own lights) to a diachronic Dutch book, i.e., a sequence of bets which, when accepted, guarantee loss of utility. Here, I show that this argument is in tension with evidence externalism, i.e., the (...) view that an agent's evidence can entail non-trivial propositions about the external world. I argue that this tension casts doubt on the idea that diachronic Dutch books can be used to justify or vindicate updating plans. (shrink)

This article uses critical discourse analysis to examine how the higher COVID-19 infection rates among South Asians in general, and Punjabis more specifically, have been represented by conservative politicians and their representatives as a consequence of cultural and religious practices. Two counter-narratives are discussed. The first substitutes the negative image of the Sikh Punjabi Canadian community with a celebratory and positive view of Sikh humanitarianism and community service. The second attributes the high numbers to class attributes such as precarious jobs, (...) poverty-level wages, employment insecurity, lack of sick days, over-crowded housing, racism and lack of access to healthcare. We argue that the conservative explanation as well as the first counter-narrative reveal continuities in culturalist understandings of South Asian immigrants, albeit in slightly different ways. The second counter-narrative represents a discursive resistance by advancing a structural analysis of health and disease in immigrant communities. (shrink)

Consciousness is an active area of both philosophical debates and scientific research. Consciousness Quest, rather than covering the broad spectrum of consciousness spread over multiple scientific disciplines, refocuses the quest for consciousness on a specific area where Eastern contemplative traditions, mostly in Hindu and Buddhist theories of mind, meet Western empirical research. This book is an introduction to current scientific thinking and research on consciousness and at the same time acquaints readers with the spectrum of classical and modern philosophical notions (...) on consciousness. (shrink)

An important question in epistemology is whether the KK principle is true, i.e., whether an agent who knows that p is also thereby in a position to know that she knows that p. We explain how a “transparency” account of self-knowledge, which maintains that we learn about our attitudes towards a proposition by reflecting not on ourselves but rather on that very proposition, supports an affirmative answer. In particular, we show that such an account allows us to reconcile a version (...) of the KK principle with an “externalist” or “reliabilist” conception of knowledge commonly thought to make that principle particularly problematic. (shrink)

Recently, several epistemologists have defended an attractive principle of epistemic rationality, which we shall call Ur-Prior Conditionalization. In this essay, I ask whether we can justify this principle by appealing to the epistemic goal of accuracy. I argue that any such accuracy-based argument will be in tension with Evidence Externalism, i.e., the view that agent's evidence may entail non-trivial propositions about the external world. This is because any such argument will crucially require the assumption that, independently of all empirical evidence, (...) it is rational for an agent to be certain that her evidence will always include truths, and that she will always have perfect introspective access to her own evidence. This assumption is in tension with Evidence Externalism. I go on to suggest that even if we don't accept Evidence Externalism, the prospects for any accuracy-based justification for Ur-Prior Conditionalization are bleak. (shrink)

Textures of the Ordinary shows how anthropology finds a companionship with philosophy in the exploration of everyday life. Based on two decades of ethnographic work among low-income urban families in India, Das shows how the notion of texture aligns ethnography with the anthropological tone in Wittgenstein and Cavell, as well as in literary texts. The book shows different routes of return to the everyday as it is corroded not only by catastrophic events but also by repetitive and routine violence within (...) everyday life itself. As an alternative to normative ethics, this book develops ordinary ethics as attentiveness to the other and as the ability of small acts of care to stand up to horrific violence. Textures of the Ordinary offers a model of thinking in which concepts and experience are shown to be mutually vulnerable. The book is an intellectually intimate invitation into the ordinary, that which is most simple yet most difficult to perceive in our lives. (shrink)

In this article, I cast doubt on an apparent truism, namely, that if evidence is available for gathering and use at a negligible cost, then it’s always instrumentally rational for us to gather that evidence and use it for making decisions. Call this ‘value of information’ (VOI). I show that VOI conflicts with two other plausible theses. The first is the view that an agent’s evidence can entail non-trivial propositions about the external world. The second is the view that epistemic (...) rationality requires us to update our credences by conditionalization. These two theses, given some plausible assumptions, make room for rationally biased inquiries where VOI fails. I go on to argue that this is bad news for defenders of VOI. (shrink)

This first full-length study of the Arabic reception of Plato's Timaeus considers the role of Galen of Pergamum in shaping medieval perceptions of the text as transgressing disciplinary norms. It argues that Galen appealed to the entangled cosmological scheme of the dialogue, where different relations connect the body, soul, and cosmos, to expand the boundaries of medicine in his pursuit for epistemic authority – the right to define and explain natural reality. Aileen Das situates Galen's work on disciplinary boundaries in (...) the context of medicine's ancient rivalry with philosophy, whose professionals were long seen as superior knowers of the cosmos vis-à-vis doctors. Her case studies show how Galen and four of the most important Christian, Muslim, and Jewish thinkers in the Arabic Middle Ages creatively interpreted key doctrines from the Timaeus to reimagine medicine and philosophy as well as their own intellectual identities. (shrink)

Conversion is a critical part of Evangelical theology and missiology. It has been defined as a crisis experience or a decision at a specific point in time. However, there is always an aspect of development, a process, involved. Increasingly, the phenomenon of conversion of those from non-Christian backgrounds, for example from other world religions, indicates that how they become followers of Christ is often characterised by a gradual journey, sometimes accompanied by visions and dreams. This paper looks at the phenomenon (...) of conversion through a historical and missiological lens to explain and understand the dynamics of the conversion. (shrink)

At the general elections in Belgium, the voter bas the possibility to bring out a vote fora party or a vote for a candidate of the party. At the general elections of November 24, 1991, for the House of Representatives, the voters have voted for 48% by preference, whereas, for the Senate 41 % of them have done so. The evolution is stagnating. The use of preferential votes is varying from one electoral district to another: from 62% in the district (...) of Tongeren-Maaseik to 34% in Mechelen.There is also a difference from one political party to another. The highest percentage is obtained by the christian-democratic parties: 58%; the lowest by the last remaining communists: 27%.The preferential v'ótes individual candidates obtain differ widely. This is not only a result of their popularity, but also of their political position, rendering of services and media-attraction. Preferential voting is characteristic to politically conscious voters. (shrink)

Pragmatic Critical Realism has been acclaimed by several scholars as one of the most versatile, application friendly and philosophically consistent paradigms for the social sciences, especially management research (Fleetwood and Ackroyd 2004). One of the more visible methodological offshoots of this epistemological school, being the case study, which has been extensively deployed as a dominant method in strategic management, organizational studies and marketing literatures. Until recently, there was some consternation in the academic world about the insufficiency of recourses available to (...) aggregate individual case studies and extract more generalizable learnings within delimited boundaries. However, the development of the QCA (Qualitative Comparative Analysis) by Ragin (2000; 2014) has changed that perception. In this paper, we argue that all of these case study-based methods, especially as they relate to Norbert Elias’ conception of figurations, and all of which fall under the broader heading of the Abduction methodology; are especially suited to gaining marketing insights in emerging market economies for a host of reasons. This is the issue that we seek to explore through theoretical argumentation and to establish with a review of the methods literature. (shrink)

Proteoglycan 4 (PRG4), first identified in synovial fluid, is an extracellular matrix structural protein in the joint implicated in reducing shear at the cartilage surface as well as controlling adhesion‐dependent synovial growth and regulating bulk protein deposition onto the cartilage. However, recent evidence suggests that it can bind to and effect downstream signaling of a number of cell surface receptors implicated in regulating the inflammatory response. Therefore, we pose the hypothesis: Does PRG4 regulate the inflammatory response and maintain tissue homeostasis? (...) Based on these novel findings implicating PRG4 as an inflammatory signaling molecule, we will present and discuss several hypotheses regarding potential mechanisms by which PRG4 may be able to regulate inflammation. If future studies can demonstrate that PRG4 is a potent inflammatory mediator, this will change current paradigms in the musculoskeletal and ophthalmological fields regarding the how the inflammatory microenvironment is regulated in these tissues and potentially others. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyse Debret's work Voyage historique et pittoresque au Brésil and show that it is marked by the French Enlightenment. The text is divided into four parts, in addition to the introduction and conclusion: the first presents the historical context from which Debret was trained in painting and received the main influences in that art; the second deals with the technical aspects of writing the work; the third touches on the indigenous theme; the fourth (...) problematises the urban chronicle, focusing on the city of Rio de Janeiro; the fifth and final part takes up his central thesis: Debret looks at Brazil from the perspective of the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Saitya Brata Das argues that in Kierkegaard's work we find a radical eschatological critique, not only of the liberal-humanist pathos of modernity but also the political theology of Carl Schmitt, that seeks to legitimise the sovereign power of the state by an appeal to a divine or theological foundation. Relating Kierkegaard's notion of 'Christianity without Christendom' to the Schellingian eschatological critique of sovereignty, he shows how Schelling's insistence on the eschatological difference between religion and politics is transformed and further intensified (...) in Kierkegaard's critique of historical reason. Such an exception without sovereignty, Das argues, is the very task of our contemporary time. (shrink)

It is widely supposed that evolutionary debunking arguments against morality constitute a type of epistemological objection to our moral beliefs. In particular, the debunking force of such arguments is not supposed to depend on the metaphysical claim that moral facts do not exist. In this paper I argue that this standard epistemological construal of EDAs is highly misleading, if not mistaken. Specifically, I argue that the most widely discussed EDAs all make key and controversial metaphysical claims about the nature of (...) morality or the possibility of moral truth that belie their apparently epistemological character. I show that the debunking force of these EDAs derives largely from metaphysical claims about morality and their implications for the possibility of moral reduction, rather than from epistemological worries associated with the existence of an causal/non-moral explanation of our moral judgments. The paper briefly concludes with a dilemma that I believe confronts all EDAs such as those discussed in this paper: either such arguments are unsound, or else they prove too much, debunking our knowledge of science and the external world, as well as morality. (shrink)

Recent work suggests that DNA replication origins are regulated by the number of multiple mini‐chromosome maintenance (MCM) complexes loaded. Origins are defined by the loading of MCM – the replicative helicase which initiates DNA replication and replication kinetics determined by origin's location and firing times. However, activation of MCM is heterogeneous; different origins firing at different times in different cells. Also, more MCMs are loaded in G1 than are used in S phase. These aspects of MCM biology are explained by (...) the observation that multiple MCMs are loaded at origins. Having more MCMs at early origins makes them more likely to fire, effecting differences in origin efficiency that define replication timing. Nonetheless, multiple MCM loading raises new questions, such as how they are loaded, where these MCMs reside at origins, and how their presence affects replication timing. In this review, we address these questions and discuss future avenues of research. (shrink)

Within the climate justice debate, the ‘beneficiary pays’ principle holds that those who benefit from greenhouse emissions associated with industrialization ought to pay for the costs of mitigating and adapting to their adverse effects. This principle constitutes a claim of inter-generational justice, and it is widely believed that the non-identity problem raises serious difficulties for any such claim. After briefly sketching the rationale behind ‘beneficiary pays,’ this paper offers a new way of understanding the claim that persons in developed societies (...) have benefited from industrialization. It argues that when we think of the claim in this new way, it evades the non-identity problem entirely. Some objections to this approach are then considered and rebutted. The paper concludes by comparing the present, relatively modest solution to the nonidentity problem with a much more ambitious attempt from the recent literature. (shrink)