_The Limits of Thought_ is a series of penetrating dialogues between the great spiritual leader, J. Krishnamurti and the renowned physicist, David Bohm. The starting point of their engaging exchange is the question: If truth is something different than reality, then what place has action in daily life in relation to truth and reality? We see Bohm and Krishnamurti explore the nature of consciousness and the condition of humanity. These enlightening dialogues address issues of truth, desire awareness, tradition, and love. (...) _Limits of Thought_ is an important book by two very respected and important thinkers. Anyone interested to see how Krishnamurti and Bohm probe some of the most essential questions of our very existence will be drawn to this great work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aristotle on False Reasoning: Language and the World in the Sophistical RefutationsMarina Berzins McCoyAristotle on False Reasoning: Language and the World in the Sophistical Refutations. Scott Schreiber. Albany: SUNY Press, 2003. pp. 240. $68.50, hardcover; $22.95, paperback.Scott Schreiber's Aristotle on False Reasoning is the first full-length English commentary on Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations in the last century. Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations is a text that has received relatively little attention (...) in the last century of scholarship, despite a revival of interest in other aspects of Aristotle's work concerned with the nature of good argument and rhetoric. (The 1995 French translation and commentary by Loius-Andre Dorion is a notable exception.) Schreiber finds the primary reason [End Page 92] for inattention to this text to lie in the tendency of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy to resolve problems in reasoning through linguistic clarification (xiv). Aristotle's claim that some errors are due to language while others lie outside the realm of linguistic error is not one to which contemporary analytic philosophy has been particularly sympathetic. The Sophistical Refutations has been neglected in light of contemporary logic. Schreiber's book attempts to return to Aristotle's project on his own philosophical terms, in order to better understand why Aristotle classified errors in reasoning as he did. Schreiber's approach is to examine each of the twelve types of false reasoning that Aristotle lays out in the Sophistical Refutations, with particular attention to Aristotle's examples, in order to understand the principles behind the overall system.Schreiber argues that Aristotle had good reason for separating errors due to language from those outside of language: Aristotle's classification of error is tied to his notion of the resolution of false arguments. To understand how to resolve a sophistical argument, we must first understand how it could have been believed to be true. Since Aristotle's aim in the Sophistical Refutations is to show why certain sorts of arguments are deceptive to some who hear them, his method of explaining errors is less a pure examination of their logical errors than of how such erroneous arguments can deceive. Aristotle is concerned with two types of problems with sophistical argument: first, why such an argument is false; and second, why it might appear to be true. Schreiber shows that most commentators have not given sufficient attention to the second of these concerns in their attempts to understand Aristotle's taxonomy. As Schreiber puts it, "Examples of false reasoning are unified into groups and differentiated into subgroups not by the nature of the confusions that they engender but by the different ways that confusion is cleared up" (54). False reasoning is due not only to mistakes in logic, but also to mistaken beliefs about language and reality. Careful examination of Aristotle's thinking allows us to see the importance of beliefs about the world in good and bad argument.For the most part, Schreiber's examinations of Aristotle's examples are lucid and helpful in understanding both the particular example at hand as well as the general picture of Aristotle's classifications. Schreiber continually returns to the importance of Aristotle's own view of language and argument in contrast to the approaches of contemporary linguistics and logic. For example, while some twentieth-century scholars have attempted to explain Aristotle's distinction between homonymy and amphiboly in terms of the contemporary distinction between semantics and syntax, [End Page 93] Aristotle seems to distinguish the two according to whether a general predicate signifies many particulars regardless of context, or in a propositional context (31). In the end, Schreiber does not think that the categories of homonymy and amphiboly can be completely distinct, even on Aristotle's own grounds, but still finds the categories useful. Schreiber is also careful to provide criticism of Aristotle's categories when warranted, both defending Aristotle against his contemporary critics when he thinks they have misunderstood him, and pointing out genuine weaknesses in Aristotle's arguments.Schreiber's book is clearly intended as a response to the contemporary Anglo-American reading of Aristotle. Much of the book assumes at least some familiarity with the ways in... (shrink)

Environmental health remains a niche topic in bioethics, despite being a prominent social determinant of health. In this paper we argue that if bioethicists are to take the project of health justice as a serious one, then we have to address environmental injustices and the threats they pose to our bioethics principles, health equity, and clinical care. To do this, we lay out three arguments supporting prioritizing environmental health in bioethics based on bioethics principles including a commitment to vulnerable populations (...) and justice. We also highlight and advocate for environmental law efforts that align with these priorities, focusing specifically on the need for a right to a healthy environment. Our intention is to draw attention to the legal and ethical concepts that underlie the importance of a healthy environment, and urge bioethicists to prioritize both legal and ethical advocacy against environmental injustices in their practice. (shrink)

Empirical studies show that though there is more room for improvement, much progress has been made toward gender equality since the second wave of feminism. Evidence also suggests that women’s advancements have been more dramatic in the public sphere of work and politics than in the private sphere of family life. We argue that this lopsided gender progress may be traced to uneven changes in gender attitudes. Using data from more than 27,000 respondents who participated in the General Social Survey (...) from 1977 through 2016, we show that gender attitudes have more than one underlying dimension and that these dimensions have changed at different rates over time. Using latent class analysis, we find that the distribution of respondents’ attitudes toward gender equality has changed over the past 40 years. There has been an increase in the number of egalitarians who support equality in public and private spheres, while the traditionals who historically opposed equality in both domains have been replaced by ambivalents who feel differently about gender equality in the public and private spheres. Meanwhile, successive birth cohorts are becoming more egalitarian, with Generation-Xers and Millennials being the most likely to hold strong egalitarian views. The feminist revolution has succeeded in promoting egalitarian views and decreasing the influence of gender traditionalism, but has yet to convince a substantial minority that gender equality should extend to both public and private spheres of social life. (shrink)

Over 100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain, which causes more disability than any other medical condition in the United States at a cost of $560–$635 billion per year. Opioid analgesics are frequently used to treat CP. However, long term use of opioids can cause brain changes such as opioid-induced hyperalgesia that, over time, increase pain sensation. Also, opioids fail to treat complex psychological factors that worsen pain-related disability, including beliefs about and emotional responses to pain. Cognitive behavioral therapy can (...) be efficacious for CP. However, CBT generally does not focus on important factors needed for long-term functional improvement, including attainment of personal goals and the psychological flexibility to choose responses to pain. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy has been recognized as an effective, non-pharmacologic treatment for a variety of CP conditions. However, little is known about the neurologic mechanisms underlying ACT. We conducted an ACT intervention in women with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were collected pre- and post-ACT, and changes in functional connectivity were measured using Network-Based Statistics. Behavioral outcomes were measured using validated assessments such as the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire, the Chronic Pain Acceptance Questionnaire, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, and the NIH Toolbox Neuro-QoLTM scales. Results suggest that, following the 4-week ACT intervention, participants exhibited reductions in brain activation within and between key networks including self-reflection, emotion, and cognitive control. These changes in connectivity strength were correlated with changes in behavioral outcomes including decreased depression and pain interference, and increased participation in social roles. This study is one of the first to demonstrate that improved function across the DMN, SN, and FPN may drive the positive outcomes associated with ACT. This study contributes to the emerging evidence supporting the use of neurophysiological indices to characterize treatment effects of alternative and complementary mind-body therapies. (shrink)

After giving the name “burnout” to the experience of being overworked and undervalued and the physician and patient suffering that comes from it, many clinicians have sought to elucidate further wh...

I offer an interpretation of a familiar, but poorly understood portion of Tarskis work on truth – bringing to light a number of unnoticed aspects of Tarskis work. A serious misreading of this part of Tarski to be found in Scott Soames Understanding Truth is treated in detail. Soamesreading vies with the textual evidence, and would make Tarskis position inconsistent in an unsubtle way. I show that Soames does not finally have a coherent interpretation of Tarski. This is unfortunate, since (...) Soames ultimately arrogates to himself a key position that he has denied to Tarski and which is rightfully Tarskis own. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 8, Page 19-20, August 2012.

The poem, has also highlighted the theme of isolation. The Darkling Thrush is the symbol of perseverance. Men at times is all by himself. There is none around. The frail, gaunt, aged , weather-beaten bird has stood against all odds. There is an air of self doubt and the poet is in a dilemma how to welcome the advent of a new era. It has endured all the odds of time and is happy today singing its joyful song.

'When Macbeth comes from the murder of Duncan, his hands are covered in King's blood; he looks at them, and feels that all the waters in the ocean cannot wash away the blood, but that- "this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.,"... -/- (http://philpapers.org/profile/112741 ).

"Rather than bookish, it is much enjoyable to create and evaluate something from own centralizing the facts and thoughts of the contents only pervaded in the book.

Student support services are the cardinal features of the Open and Distance Learning System. In India, the Indira Gandhi National Open University, 13 state open universities and over 200 Distance Education Institutes attached to conventional universities and private/autonomous institutes offering programmes through the distance mode have all created adequate provisions for learner support services and the systems, rules, regulations and norms have been put in place. However, it is significant that a learner in the ODL system remains away from the (...) teacher and the peer group. Thus, the learner feels isolated and needs the empathy of all the functionaries concerned. It has been our experience at IGNOU that more often than not the functionaries fail to realize the value of a learner and the learner fails to understand the value attributed to him by the ODL system. Without such realization the rules and regulations lose their significance. Hence, inculcation of values is of paramount importance in the functioning of the ODL system. In this article we have discussed about ‘inculcation of values’ among the ‘learners’ as well as the ‘functionaries’ for developing ‘best practices’ in learner support services in the ODL system. The inputs are based primarily on direct experiences of the authors. (shrink)

The problem of negative existentials is one of the classic problems in philosophy of language. Latter-day developments in semantics resolved this problem without our help, but due to accidents of history no one noticed.

Stephen Schiffer has argued that natural languages do not have compositional semantics. But it has been widely held that compositional semantics is required in order to explain how it is possible that we have the linguistic capacities that we do. In particular, our use of natural languages is productive in the sense that there are indefinitely many sentences that we have never heard or considered before, but which we are nonetheless capable of understanding. How is this possible? Compositionality evidently supplies (...) a clear answer to that question, because it guarantees that there is some way of determining the meaning of each sentence of the language from a fixed and finite base of semantic value assignments. This poses a serious challenge to Schiffer's negative thesis. -/- Schiffer proposes to answer this challenge in a way that will also provide a solution to the language-relation problem. This is the problem of specifying what relation must obtain between a population P and a language L in order for L to be a language of P. Schiffer's strategy is to reduce the problem for public languages to that of specifying the language-relation for languages of thought-specifying what it is to think in a language. -/- I will show in a precise way that Schiffer has neither met the productivity challenge nor solved the language-relation problem. Using Schiffer's characterization of what it is to think in a language, I show that if an agent thinks in some language L, then there is an infinity of languages that the agent also thinks in with the very same sentence tokens, but with arbitrarily different meanings. Thus, Schiffer has clearly not given a sufficient condition for an agent to think in a language, and Schiffer cannot do with less than a sufficient condition. Moreover, I will argue that Schiffer cannot avail himself of various attempts in the literature to address similar problems. (shrink)

Brief: Analysis on English and British Literature widely along-with creative genre, on using different styles of linguistic capability at different types of Essays, reflected now on recent book 'The Revolt in the Desert (Journey on English Literature from India to USA).

This research study was an interpretive inquiry into the experience of contemporary peacekeepers healing from trauma. Ten contemporary peacekeepers were interviewed who have sought treatment from trauma resulting from deployments to Somalia, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia. A thematic analysis of the text was undertaken, in which themes emerged to document and understand the ways in which contemporary peacekeepers heal from trauma. Narratives from the transcribed interviews were reviewed with the participants and reflective journaling by the researcher provided further clarification (...) of the data to understand the experience. The peacekeepers’ descriptions of the situations of their bodies in time, space and relation provided a fresh way into understanding the embodied nature of healing from trauma. Three overarching themes: the centrality of brotherhood and grieving loss in the military family; the centrality of time and the body in healing from trauma; and the military response as betrayal and creating trauma from within emerged from the inquiry which will contribute to more effective practice guidelines for the care of contemporary peacekeepers healing from trauma. (shrink)

Tarski's argumentative use of the liar paradox is well-known, but officially it is the Grelling paradox that has final pride of place in Tarski's argument, not the Liar at all. Tarski explicitly gives argumentation that adverts to the liar argument, but it is an alternative argument—one he only hints at and which adverts to the Grelling—which he says has the advantage of removing any empirical element. In this paper, we will examine how the Grelling might be used in place of (...) the Liar in Tarski's argument for his exact indefinability thesis, and assess in what way the difference might be significant. If successful, Tarski's use of the Grelling puts pressure on how Convention T can be justified. (shrink)

Alfred Tarski's work on truth has become a touchstone for a great deal of philosophical work on truth. A good grasp of it is critical for understanding the contemporary literature on truth and semantics. In this paper, I present a fresh interpretation of Tarski's view, one which aims to draw it out more fully in areas of philosophical interest.