Violent: Isn't his account of philosophy, however, rather strange?--not, I fear, in the sense that it is novel or quite unusual, but in the sense that it is oddly misguided? Part of the oddness comes out in its titular description--"the search for ultimate reality." We find that he views ontology as the center of philosophy, for "philosophy is that cognitive endeavor in which the question of being is asked". "The search for ultimate reality beyond everything that seems to be real (...) is the search for being-itself, for the power of being in everything that is. It is the ontological question, the root question of every philosophy". (shrink)

The paper addresses the use of heterogeneous ensembles of intelligent unmanned vehicles in such a perspective field of innovations as an unmanned fishery. The issues of joint activity of unmanned vehicles of different types in fishing operations based on intelligent technologies are investigated. The “smart fishing” approach based on the joint fishing operation model is proposed. The operational framework that includes missions, roles, and activity scenarios embedded in the discretized spatial model is presented. The scenario activities are considered as (...) the sequences of pentad that determine executing specific functions concerning the specified waypoint, timepoints, and the states of vehicles. The definition of the plan as the scenario prototype that needs adjusting to the conditions of the situational context is proposed. The coordination problem regarding the joint activities of the unmanned vehicles and their scenarios is defined and the coordination framework based on the distributed common board model and coordination primitives is presented. The prototype of the intelligent scenario-based system including the implementation of both operational and coordination frameworks developed for the control of unmanned vehicles is described. This system makes unmanned vehicles capable to absorb all the latest advances in intelligent technologies to perform smart fishing operations jointly in a large heterogeneous group. The proposed approach to smart fishing using intelligent technologies makes it possible to detach fishermen from the fishing activities dangerous to their life and health, to reduce significantly poaching and illegal fishing, to increase the overall efficiency of fishing operations, and even to save the marine ecosystem. (shrink)

Writers on jurisprudence often stress that conflict between positive laws and morality does not invalidate the positive laws. A law which requires me to compensate another for an injury caused by a dangerous object kept on my property is not invalidated by the fact that I have not been negligent and have no moral obligation to compensate the injured person. And although I have a moral obligation to keep my promises, positive laws may validly imply that I need not keep (...) promises not made for a consideration or under seal. Thus positive law may permit acts not permitted by morals and may forbid acts permitted by morals. The lesson drawn from these thoughts is that to establish a positive law as valid we need not consider the relationships it bears to the rules of morals. A valid law is simply a law created in accordance with the constitutional conventions or ‘rules of recognition’ of the society in which it is to be applied. It is the manner of its establishment, not its relationship to morals, which makes a law valid. (shrink)

The aim of the essay is to devise a logic of conditionality which escapes the paradoxes which arise when the general conditional is identified with the universalization of the material conditional. The assumption I adopt is that the logic of one contingent form differs from that of another to the extent that the two forms have different confirmations and disconfirmations. The logic of conditionals is not, But that of their confirmations and disconfirmations is, At bottom truth-Functional; and the logical relations (...) between conditionals, And between conditionals and non-Conditionals, May be traced through the truth-Functional connections between their respective confirmations and disconfirmations. The approach necessitates the re-Definition of the notions of confirmation and entailment. A peculiarity of the system which emerges is that from it can be derived, Without existential assumptions, The twenty-Four valid forms of the syllogism, The relationships of the square of opposition and the other commonly accepted inferences of traditional logic. (shrink)

Three lectures on Jaina philosophy and ancient civilization.

With the publication of this volume from the prolific pen of one of Germany's outstanding younger philosophers, the German-speaking scholarly world has a more extensive survey of key issues in the philosophy of science than the English-speaking world. The book is the first of a comprehensive work whose title is "Problems and Results in the Philosophy of Science and Analytic Philosophy." While the title of the book under consideration shows that it is primarily concerned with scientific explanation and justification, Stegmüller (...) not merely undertakes to acquaint his readers with the most important Anglo-American developments concerning these topics, but also independently develops his own ideas with respect to them and an important, if brief, feature of the volume is an appendix in which he sets forth over thirty "problems that are either unsolved or the solution of which is controversial." Without going into substantival detail, perhaps the quickest way to indicate Stegmüller's main concerns and general orientation is to note the extent of the page references in the index of names where, in descending order, one finds the names of Carl G. Hempel, to whom the volume is dedicated, R. Carnap, N. Goodman, N. Rescher, W. V. Quine, P. Oppenheim, E. Nagel, W. Dray and K. Popper. Curiously, Stegmüller indicates that, aside from Hempel, the man who has exercised the greatest influence on him has been Sir Karl Popper, but then he limits his consideration of him mainly to Popper's early exposition of explanation by reference to the breaking of a thread, while ignoring what he has to say about such topics as falsification, induction, and the problem of demarcation. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that there are no references to P. Duhem, J. Agassi, and P. Feyerabend, but there are also none to G. Bergmann, M. Bunge, P. Frank, N. R. Hanson, A. Koyré, V. Kraft, G. Radnitzky, and J. J. C. Smart, to mention just a few.--R. F. M. (shrink)

Contrary to what might be expected given a religious or other motivation, Pierre Duhem's interest in mediaeval science was the result of his surprise encounter with Jordanus de Nemore while working on Les origines de la statique in the late autumn of 1903. Historical assumptions common among physicists at that time may explain this surprise, which occasioned a frantic search for more mediaeval precursors for Renaissance mechanics. It also raised serious historiographical problems that threatened even his methodological views, until they (...) were resolved in his To save the phenomena of 1908. (shrink)

Is an ethical leader an oxymoron? Society demands and expects greater accountability from organizational leaders. The literature on leadership, especially business leadership, has neglected ethical issues by focusing only on those approaches and strategies that emphasize self-centred, individualistic concerns. How ever, true and effective leadership is one in which the leader's behaviour and the exercise of the leadership influence process are consistent with ethical and moral values. The authors argue that our understanding of leadership is incomplete, if not deformed, if (...) it does not include the three critical dimensions of ethical leadership. (shrink)