The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox as formulated in their original paper is critically examined. Their argument that quantum mechanics is incomplete is shown to be unsatisfactory on two important grounds. (i) The gedanken experiment proposed by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen is physically unrealizable, and consequently their argument is invalid as it stands. (ii) The basic assumptions of their argument are equivalent to the assumption that quantum mechanical systems are in fact describable by unique eigenfunctions of the operators corresponding to physical observables, independent (...) of any observation or measurement. Following an argument due to Furry, it is shown that this interpretation of quantum mechanics must lead to some physical predictions at variance with those of conventional quantum mechanics. A decisive experiment has been performed by Freedman and Clauser, which rules out this interpretation, and imposes severe restrictions on any alternative theory which incorporates the Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen concept of physical reality. (shrink)

This book applies philosophical hermeneutics to biblical studies. Whereas traditional studies of the Bible limit their analysis to the exploration of the texts' original historical sense, this book discusses how to move beyond these issues to a consideration of biblical texts' existential significance for the present. In response to the rejection of biblical significance in the late nineteenth century and the accompanying crisis of nihilism, B. H. McLean argues that the philosophical thought of Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer, Habermas, Ricoeur, Levinas, Deleuze (...) and Guattari provides an alternative to historically oriented approaches to biblical interpretation. He uses basic principles drawn from these philosophers' writings to create a framework for a new 'post-historical' mode of hermeneutic inquiry that transcends the subject-based epistemological structure of historical positivism. (shrink)

Speaking of Professor Geach's belief that pronouns in natural language function like the bound variables in quantification theory, Gareth Evans, in ‘Pronouns, Quantifiers, and Relative Clauses - I’ says :I want to try to show that there are pronouns with quantifier antecedents that function in a quite different way. Such pronouns typically stand in a different grammatical relation to their antecedents, and; in contrast with bound pronouns, must be assigned a reference, so that their most immediate sentential contexts can always (...) be assigned a truth value. The relevant grammatical relation appears to be Klima's relation of ‘in construction with’. When the pronoun is in construction with its antecedent, as in [‘Some man loves his mother’] and [‘No man is happy when he is in love’] the result is a bound pronoun. (shrink)

Background: The factors influencing parents’ willingness to enroll their children in biobanks are poorly understood. This study sought to assess parents’ willingness to enroll their children, and their perceived benefits, concerns, and information needs under different consent and data-sharing scenarios, and to identify factors associated with willingness. Methods: This large, experimental survey of patients at the 11 eMERGE Network sites used a disproportionate stratified sampling scheme to enrich the sample with historically underrepresented groups. Participants were randomized to receive one of (...) three consent and data-sharing scenarios. Results: In total, 90,000 surveys were mailed and 13,000 individuals responded (15.8% response rate). 5737 respondents were parents of minor children. Overall, 55% (95% confidence interval 50–59%) of parents were willing to enroll their youngest minor child in a hypothetical biobank; willingness did not differ between consent and data-sharing scenarios. Lower educational attainment, higher religiosity, lower trust, worries about privacy, and attitudes about benefits, concerns, and information needs were independently associated with less willingness to allow their child to participate. Of parents who were willing to participate themselves, 25% were not willing to allow their child to participate. Being willing to participate but not willing to allow one’s child to participate was independently associated with multiple factors, including race, lower educational attainment, lower annual household income, public health care insurance, and higher religiosity. Conclusions: Fifty-five percent of parents were willing to allow their youngest minor child to participate in a hypothetical biobank. Building trust, protecting privacy, and addressing attitudes may increase enrollment and diversity in pediatric biobanks. (shrink)

The author has made this treatise on Madhva’s realistic school of Ved?nta philosophy convincing to the modern mind by employing western logical apparatus in substantiating Madhva’s ideas. Following the Indian classical tradition, the author has examined the validity of Advaitaved?nta, the Absolute Monism of ?a?kara and Bh?skara as P?rvapak?a, and logically proved its inconsistencies. He has then established the Dvaitasiddh?nta i.e., the Monotheistic Dualism of Madhva. He has successfully brought out the nuances of the realistic school of Indian philosophical thought (...) in this work. A Modern Introduction to M?dhva Philosophy is Prof B H Kotabagi’s posthumous publication. (shrink)

Speaking of Professor Geach's belief that pronouns in natural language function like the bound variables in quantification theory, Gareth Evans, in ‘Pronouns, Quantifiers, and Relative Clauses - I’ says :I want to try to show that there are pronouns with quantifier antecedents that function in a quite different way. Such pronouns typically stand in a different grammatical relation to their antecedents, and; in contrast with bound pronouns, must be assigned a reference, so that their most immediate sentential contexts can always (...) be assigned a truth value. The relevant grammatical relation appears to be Klima's relation of ‘in construction with’. When the pronoun is in construction with its antecedent, as in [‘Some man loves his mother’] and [‘No man is happy when he is in love’] the result is a bound pronoun. (shrink)

The eleventh-century Byzantine compiler Cedrenus includes a unique story in the midst of his otherwise traditional and hagiographic material on the emperor Constantine. Mentioning the outbreak of war between the Roman and Persian empires, he describes the cause of the breakdown of peace somewhat as follows. A certain Metrodorus, who was of Persian origin, went to visit the Brahmins in India to study philosophy and won the reputation of being a holy man through his asceticism. He also built water mills (...) and baths, unknown to the Indians till that time. Having acquired this reputation, he entered the temples and took away many precious stones and pearls. He also received gifts from the king of the Indians. On his return to Byzantium he gave them to the emperor Constantine as being gifts of his own. When Constantine expressed his astonishment, Metrodorus said he had sent other gifts by the land route but that they had been detained by the Persians. Constantine then wrote a strong protest to Sapor demanding the gifts but received no reply; thus the peace was broken. This remarkable conte, more appropriate to the Arabian Nights than to sober history, is generally supposed to be referred to in a passage in Ammianus. Towards the end of a long section commenting on the personality and achievements of Julian, Ammianus turns briefly to the question of the ultimate responsibility for the Persian War which ended so disastrously for Julian and the Roman Empire: et quoniam eum obtrectatoribus novos bellorum tumultus ad perniciem rei communis insimulant concitasse, sciant docente veritate perspicue, non Iulianum sed Constantinum ardores Parthicos succendisse, cum Metrodori mendaciis avidius acquiescit, ut dudum rettulimus plane. (shrink)

The paper presents and applies Hilbert's Epsilon Calculus, first describing its standard proof theory, and giving it an intensional semantics. These are contrasted with the proof theory of Fregean Predicate Logic, and the traditional (extensional) choice function semantics for the calculus. The semantics provided show that epsilon terms are referring terms in Donnellan's sense, enabling the symbolisation and validation of argument forms involving E-type pronouns, both in extensional and intensional contexts. By providing for transparency in intensional constructions they support a (...) Model Conceptualism to contrast with traditional intensional logic's Modal Realism. But epsilon-terms also symbolise fictions, and through their difference from iota terms enable the solution of a number of outstanding puzzles about Direct Reference and de re beliefs. (shrink)

The history of Athenian relations with Sicily in the fifth century is beset with difficulties; and no part of it, perhaps, is more obscure than the story of what is commonly known as the First Sicilian Expedition, which set sail from Athens in the late summer of 427 under Laches, and was reinforced under Pythodorus, Sophocles and Eurymedon in the winter of 426.

Concepts of stability and symmetry in irreversible thermodynamics are developed through the analysis of system energy flows. The excess power function, derived from a local energy conservation equation, is shown to yield necessary and sufficient stability criteria for linear and nonlinear irreversible processes. In the absence of symmetry-destroying external forces, the linear range may be characterized by a set of phenomenological coefficient symmetries relating coupled forces and displacements, velocities, and accelerations, whereas rotational phenomena in nonlinear processes may be characterized by (...) skew-symmetric components of the phenomenological coefficients. A physical interpretation of the nature of the skew-symmetric parts is given and the variational principle of minimum dissipation of energy is related to a stability criterion. (shrink)

We present PhrasIS, a benchmark dataset composed of natural occurring Phrase pairs with Inference and Similarity annotations for the evaluation of semantic representations. The described dataset fills the gap between word and sentence-level datasets, allowing to evaluate compositional models at a finer granularity than sentences. Contrary to other datasets, the phrase pairs are extracted from naturally occurring text in image captions and news headlines. All the text fragments have been annotated by experts following a rigorous process also described in the (...) manuscript achieving high inter annotator agreement. In this work we analyse the dataset, showing the relation between inference labels and similarity scores. With 10K phrase pairs split in development and test, the dataset is an excellent benchmark for testing meaning representation systems. (shrink)

Speaking of Professor Geach's belief that pronouns in natural language function like the bound variables in quantification theory, Gareth Evans, in ‘Pronouns, Quantifiers, and Relative Clauses - I’ says :I want to try to show that there are pronouns with quantifier antecedents that function in a quite different way. Such pronouns typically stand in a different grammatical relation to their antecedents, and; in contrast with bound pronouns, must be assigned a reference, so that their most immediate sentential contexts can always (...) be assigned a truth value. The relevant grammatical relation appears to be Klima's relation of ‘in construction with’. When the pronoun is in construction with its antecedent, as in [‘Some man loves his mother’] and [‘No man is happy when he is in love’] the result is a bound pronoun. (shrink)

The paper presents and applies Hilbert's Epsilon Calculus, first describing its standard proof theory, and giving it an intensional semantics. These are contrasted with the proof theory of Fregean Predicate Logic, and the traditional (extensional) choice function semantics for the calculus. The semantics provided show that epsilon terms are referring terms in Donnellan's sense, enabling the symbolisation and validation of argument forms involving E-type pronouns, both in extensional and intensional contexts. By providing for transparency in intensional constructions they support a (...) Model Conceptualism to contrast with traditional intensional logic's Modal Realism. But epsilon-terms also symbolise fictions, and through their difference from iota terms enable the solution of a number of outstanding puzzles about Direct Reference and de re beliefs. (shrink)

In list-method directed forgetting, reexposure to forgotten List 1 items has been shown to reduce directed forgetting. proposed that reexposure to a few List 1 items only during a direct test of memory reinstates the entire List 1 episode. In the present experiments, part-list reexposure in the context of indirect as well as direct memory tests reduced directed forgetting. Directed forgetting was reduced when 50% or more of the items were reexposed, and was intact when only 25% were reexposed. Furthermore, (...) part-list reexposure appeared to reinstate only reexposed items-not the entire List 1 episode. (shrink)

The scope of the thermodynamic theory of nonlinear irreversible processes is widened to include the nonlinear stability analysis of system motion. The emphasis is shifted from the analysis of instantaneous energy flows to that of the average work performed by periodic nonlinear processes. The principle of virtual work separates dissipative and conservative forces. The vanishing of the work of conservative forces determines the natural period of oscillation. Stability is then determined by the variations of the dissipative forces with amplitude of (...) oscillation. If the work is a minimum, under certain conditions, the motion is stable. Reduction to linear analysis shows the coincidence with the impedance analysis of electrical circuit theory. The theory is applied to the analysis of temporal interactions of nonlinear irreversible processes in the particular cases of synchronization and hysteresis. Characteristic nonequilibrium phenomena of directional energy transfers, self-excitation, system passivity, wave modulation, and “beat” phenomena are observed. Possible relationships with biological processes are discussed. (shrink)

Background Informed consent confers upon participants the right to decline or accept participation in a study in equal measure. Consent declines can be used as a potential metric to assess the adequacy of the informed consent process. Limited literature is available on the reporting of consent declines in Clinical Research. We evaluated randomized controlled trials published in three high-impact factor journals for consent declines to assess the extent of exertion of autonomy by research participants. Methods CONSORT flow charts in RCTs (...) published in New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and Journal of the American Medical Association between 2012 and 2015 were evaluated. The total and per journal proportion of RCTs reporting consent declines was calculated. Percentage of consent declines was also compared based on number of centers and type of setting. Between-groups analysis was done using Chi Square, Chi Square for trend and a Crude odds ratio [95% C.I] were calculated. Results Only 3.7% of the published articles were RCTs. Of the 1103 RCTs, only 532 reported consent declines. JAMA had the highest RCTs reporting consent declines, the Lancet [129,150/781,924, 16.5%] had the most participants declining consent. Difference was significant using Chi square for linear trend [ p < 0.00001]. Consent decline rate was higher in developed countries relative to developing countries [cOR: 2.27, p < 0.000001] and in single centric versus multicentric studies [cOR : 3.63, p < 0.0000001]. Conclusion Both authors and journal editors need to ensure better reporting of consent declines. (shrink)

Brian Wormald provides a fundamental reappraisal of one of the most complex and innovative figures of the late-Elizabethan and Jacobean age. In the centuries since his death, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) has been perceived and studied as a promoter and prophet of the philosophy of science--natural science--but he saw himself also as a clarifier and promoter of what he called "policy" or the study and improvement of the structure and function of civil states. Mr. Wormald shows that Bacon was concerned equally (...) with the knowledge of the world of nature and with that of policy. The junction between the two enterprises was effected by his work in history; and in the end it was Bacon's conception and practice of history that provided the answer to his efforts to advance policy and natural philosophy. (shrink)