Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)’s relationship with the Jews is explored in this article. The history of this relationship can be divided into two different periods. The first begins during his formative years in South Africa from 1893 to 1914, and the second, during his political activism in India thereafter. The article points out that Gandhi’s close Jewish associates in South Africa, although coming primarily from a Theosophist background, considered their support of Gandhi and his struggle to represent their core Jewish (...) values. Still, Gandhi’s close Jewish supporters did not successfully influence Gandhi regarding Zionism. In retrospect, Gandhi’s objection to Zionism enormously impacted the Indian Congress Party’s position regarding Palestine. The article notes that although Gandhi opposed political Zionism, he supported Zionism as a spiritual movement that could be best realized “within.” Somewhat surprising and little-known fact was a desire on Gandhi’s part to mediate between the Arabs and the Jews in direct talks. Gandhi hoped the Zionist leaders would respond positively to his offer to mediate so that he could advance his teachings of nonviolence while also claiming to represent the Indian Muslims. The article discusses Gandhi’s call to German and European Jews to resist the Nazi regime by adopting Satyagraha, the consequent rift with Jewry that followed, and his silence after the Holocaust. Finally, the article also briefly explores B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956)’s views on the Jews and the Indian pariahs. (shrink)

Unfortunately, Adam Smith’s undeserved legacy as a proponent of laissez-faire and liberal institutions at the international scope inhibits profiting from his refined analysis of international affairs. I argue that the Wealth of Nations’ chapter on colonies contains Smith’s discussion of the sovereign’s adaptation to ignorance in global politics. I examine the sense in which the sovereign is ignorant according to Smith and how sovereigns adapt to ignorance with varying success. His comparative analysis suggests that reduction of one’s share in ignorance (...) is not always desirable, and a priori rejection of ignorance is impractical because it deprives of a potentially advantageous resource. A careful reading of his work enables learning from his approach to global politics, without filtering it through his ideas on the free market. (shrink)

Photographers John Shimon and Julie Lindemann use antique cameras, modern lens technology, artificial light, and contemporary pop culture to create portraits of the people in their native state amidst backyards, living rooms, parking lots, and the landscape of Wisconsin. These recent photographs are juxtaposed with portraits from the Milwaukee Art Museum’s permanent collections, including daguerreotype portraits, ambrotypes, and tintypes of anonymous people taken by nineteenth-century photographers, as well with photographs by such well-known artists as Alfred Stieglitz, Sally Mann, Larry (...) Clark, Walker Evans, Nan Goldin, Eugene von Beuenchenhein, and Francis Ford. The pairings of new and old illustrate the legacy of portraiture and the significance of “posing” before the lens, and each image is enriched by its proximity to another, unmasking sitter, photographer, and viewer. Unmasked & Anonymous: Shimon & Lindemann Consider Portraiture includes more than sixty color and black-and-white photographs plus essays by Shimon, Lindemann, and Milwaukee Art Museum curator Lisa Hostetler. (shrink)

Central to contemporary cognitive science is the notion that mental processes involve computations defined over internal representations. This view stands in sharp contrast to the to visual perception and cognition, whose most prominent proponent has been J.J. Gibson. In the direct theory, perception does not involve computations of any sort; it is the result of the direct pickup of available information. The publication of Gibson's recent book (Gibson 1979) offers an opportunity to examine his approach, and, more generally, to contrast (...) the theory of direct perception with the computational/representational view. In the first part of the present article (Sections 2direct perceptioncase study”: the problem of perceiving the three-dimensional shape of moving objects is examined. This problem, which has been extensively studied within the immediate perception framework, serves to illustrate some of the inherent shortcomings of that approach. Finally, in Section 5, an attempt is made to place the theory of direct perception in perspective by embedding it in a more comprehensive framework. (shrink)

The editors welcome letters from readers, although we cannot guarantee that all will be published. To ensure timeliness, correspondents must respond to an article within seven weeks, and not exceed two double‐spaced pages. Letters become the property of the editors and may be edited and shortened at our discretion.

Name der Zeitschrift: Naharaim Jahrgang: 8 Heft: 2 Seiten: 253-272.

The strangeness of modern physics has sparked several popular books--such as The Tao of Physics--that explore its affinity with Eastern mysticism. But the founders of quantum mechanics were educated in the classical traditions of Western civilization and Western philosophy. In Nature Loves to Hide, physicist Shimon Malin takes readers on a fascinating tour of quantum theory--one that turns to Western philosophical thought to clarify this strange yet inescapable explanation of reality. Malin translates quantum mechanics into plain English, explaining its (...) origins and workings against the backdrop of the famous debate between Niels Bohr and the skeptical Albert Einstein. Then he moves on to build a philosophical framework that can account for the quantum nature of reality. He shows, for instance, how Platonic and Neoplatonic thought resonates with quantum theory. He draws out the linkage between the concepts of Neoplatonism and the more recent process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. The universe, Whitehead wrote, is an organic whole, composed not of lifeless objects, but "elementary experiences." Beginning with Whitehead's insight, Malin shows how this concept of "throbs of experience" expresses quantum reality, with its subatomic uncertainties, its constituents that are waves and also particles, its emphasis on acts of measurement. Once any educated person could explain the universe as a vast Newtonian web of cause and effect, but since quantum theory, reality again appears to be richer and more mysterious than we had thought. Writing with broad humanistic insight and deep knowledge of science, and using delightful conversations with fictional astronauts Peter and Julie to explain more difficult concepts, Shimon Malin offers a profound new understanding of the nature of reality--one that shows a deep continuity with aspects of our Western philosophical tradition going back 2500 years, and that feels more deeply satisfying, and truer, than the clockwork universe of Newton. (shrink)

La primera parte de este libro expone la idea o teoría de las Leyes Noájicas, desde perspectivas espirituales, filosóficas, psicológicas, sociales y políticas. Varios de sus contenidos ya han sido presentados a líderes, incluidos estadistas internacionales (cuyas cartas se incluyen aquí), que han respondido con ánimo a su estudio y difusión. La segunda parte del libro presenta la conducta o práctica concreta de las Leyes Noájicas. Esta tarea precisa procede de una extensa investigación acerca de la Tradición del comentario sobre (...) la Revelación en el Sinaí, de la cual forman parte las Leyes de Noé (que ya anteriormente eran el pacto moral de la humanidad, pero que fueron reexpresadas con autoridad en el Sinaí). La forma en que las Leyes de Noé con sus detalles estructuran la conducta ética de los principales dominios de la existencia humana se establece claramente para el lector general; y con extensas notas a pie de página y referencias para aquellos que buscan profundizar el estudio. (shrink)

We study the structural rainbow Ramsey theory at uncountable cardinals. Compared to the usual rainbow Ramsey theory, the variation focuses on finding a rainbow subset that not only is of a certain cardinality but also satisfies certain structural constraints, such as being stationary or closed in its supremum. In the process of dealing with cardinals greater than ω1, we uncover some connections between versions of Chang's Conjectures and instances of rainbow Ramsey partition relations, addressing a question raised in [18].

It is proposed to conceive of representation as an emergent phenomenon that is supervenient on patterns of activity of coarsely tuned and highly redundant feature detectors. The computational underpinnings of the outlined concept of representation are (1) the properties of collections of overlapping graded receptive fields, as in the biological perceptual systems that exhibit hyperacuity-level performance, and (2) the sufficiency of a set of proximal distances between stimulus representations for the recovery of the corresponding distal contrasts between stimuli, as in (...) multidimensional scaling. The present preliminary study appears to indicate that this concept of representation is computationally viable, and is compatible with psychological and neurobiological data. (shrink)

Prominent thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas and Michael Sandel are warning that biomedical enhancements will undermine fundamental political values. Yet whether biomedical enhancements will undermine such values depends on how biomedical enhancements will function, how they will be administered and to whom. Since only few enhancements are obtainable, it is difficult to tell whether these predictions are sound. Nevertheless, such warnings are extremely valuable. As a society we must, at the very least, be aware of developments that could have harmful (...) consequences. Indeed, if important values were to be jeopardized, we should take appropriate measures to protect them. This paper focuses on four central values: solidarity, personal responsibility, equality and autonomy. It delineates the conditions under which biomedical enhancements would undermine these values. It also details the circumstances under which these values would be unaffected by enhancements as well as those under which they would be promoted. Specifying these conditions is valuable; it would enable society to prepare appropriate ethical guidelines and policy responses in advance. (shrink)

The main focus of the book is the presentation of the 'inertial' view of population growth. This view provides a rather simple model for complex population dynamics, and is achieved at the level of the single species without invoking species interactions. An important part of this account is the maternal effect. Investment of mothers in the quality of their daughters makes the rate of reproduction of the current generation depend not only on the current environment, but also on the environment (...) experienced by the previous generation. (shrink)

Intelligent systems are faced with the problem of securing a principled (ideally, veridical) relationship between the world and its internal representation. I propose a unified approach to visual representation, addressing both the needs of superordinate and basic-level categorization and of identification of specific instances of familiar categories. According to the proposed theory, a shape is represented by its similarity to a number of reference shapes, measured in a high-dimensional space of elementary features. This amounts to embedding the stimulus in a (...) low-dimensional proximal shape space. That space turns out to support representation of distal shape similarities which is veridical in the sense of Shepard's (1968) notion of second-order isomorphism (i.e., correspondence between distal and proximal similarities among shapes, rather than between distal shapes and their proximal representations). Furthermore, a general expression for similarity between two stimuli, based on comparisons to reference shapes, can be used to derive models of perceived similarity ranging from continuous, symmetric, and hierarchical, as in the multidimensional scaling models (Shepard, 1980), to discrete and non-hierarchical, as in the general contrast models (Tversky, 1977; Shepard and Arabie, 1979). (shrink)

We prove that the strong polarized relation $\left( {\mu _\mu ^ + } \right) \to \left( {\mu _\mu ^ + } \right)_2^{1.1}$ is consistent with ZFC, for a singular ì which is a limit of measurable cardinals.

The problem of representing the spatial structure of images, which arises in visual object processing, is commonly described using terminology borrowed from propositional theories of cognition, notably, the concept of compositionality. The classical propositional stance mandates representations composed of symbols, which stand for atomic or composite entities and enter into arbitrarily nested relationships. We argue that the main desiderata of a representational system—productivity and systematicity—can (indeed, for a number of reasons, should) be achieved without recourse to the classical, proposition‐like compositionality. (...) We show how this can be done, by describing a systematic and productive model of the representation of visual structure, which relies on static rather than dynamic binding and uses coarsely coded rather than atomic shape primitives. (shrink)

Lasnik’s review of the Minimalist program in syntax [1] offers cognitive scientists help in navigating some of the arcana of the current theoretical thinking in transformational generative grammar. One may observe, however, that this journey is more like a taxi ride gone bad than a free tour: it is the driver who decides on the itinerary, and questioning his choice may get you kicked out. Meanwhile, the meter in the cab of the generative theory of grammar is running, and has (...) been since the publication of Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures in 1957. The fare that it ran up is none the less daunting for the detours made in his Aspects of Theory of Syntax in 1965, Government and Binding in 1981, and now The Minimalist Program, in 1995. Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, it seems like never in the field of cognitive science was so much owed by so many of us to so few. For most of us in the cognitive sciences this situation will appear quite benign, if we realize that it is the generative linguists who should by rights be paying this bill. The reason for that is simple and is well known in the philosophy of science: putting forward a theory is like taking out a loan, to be repayed by gleaning an empirical basis for it; theories that fail to do so are declared bankrupt. In the sciences of the mind, this maxim translates into the need to demonstrate the psychological, and, eventually, the neurobiological, reality of the theoretical constructs. Many examples of this process can be found in the study of human vision, where, as in language, direct observation of the underlying mechanisms is difficult; for instance, the concept of multiple parallel spatial frequency channels, introduced in the late 1960s, was completely vindicated by purely behavioral means over the following decade; see, e.g., [2]. In linguistics, the nature of the requisite evidence is well described by Townsend and Bever: “What do we test today if we want to explore the behavioral implications of syntax?. (shrink)

The problem of representing the spatial structure of images, which arises in visual object processing, is commonly described using terminology borrowed from propositional theories of cognition, notably, the concept of compositionality. The classical propositional stance mandates representations composed of symbols, which stand for atomic or composite entities and enter into arbitrarily nested relationships. We argue that the main desiderata of a representational system — productivity and systematicity — can (indeed, for a number of reasons, should) be achieved without recourse to (...) the classical, proposition-like compositionality. We show how this can be done, by describing a systematic and productive model of the representation of visual structure, which relies on static rather than dynamic binding and uses coarsely coded rather than atomic shape primitives. (shrink)

Śiḥot maran ha-Mashgiaḥ Mohari Leṿinshṭain, zatsal -- Ḥidushe torato ʻa. Mas. B.ḳ. ṿe-liḳuṭim -- Leḳeṭ mi-maʼamraṿ mi-moreshet Daṿid Heber ṿe-ʻinyene ha-shaʻah.

To ascertain the context of Il’enkov’s philosophy, the author delves into the history of philosophy since the Sophists and Plato. For Il’enkov, philosophy is not an abstract science “about everything, ” but a study of ideas – forms which are identical for thinking and being. These objective and universal forms of thought are explained as products and schemes of human activity creating the world of culture and reified in its “smart” things.

To ascertain the context of Il'enkov's philosophy, the author delves into the history of philosophy since the Sophists and Plato. For Il'enkov, philosophy is not an abstract science "about everything," but a study of ideas -- forms which are identical for thinking and being. These objective and universal forms of thought are explained as products and schemes of human activity creating the world of culture and reified in its "smart" things.

This article analyses the biochemical object of tnf inhibitors from the perspective of living with an autoimmune disease. The author tries to tease out how the concept of immune inhibition is used in tandem with the biochemical object of tnf inhibitors to dominate in defining and narrating what health and disease, normal and pathological, cure and healing can mean in the context of autoimmune bodies. Specifically, and within the ‘pathological’ framework of autoimmune diseases, the pharmacological treatment of tnf inhibition is (...) designed to suppress the ‘overly’ active immune system, thus acting as a negative or suppressing biochemical agent aimed at putting the ‘malfunctioning’ immune system back in balance. As can be seen in the current conjuncture, tnf inhibitors officially —and governmentally— place those taking them in a risk group, as they 'lower' their overall bodily immunity and make them more vulnerable to infectious diseases, while stabilizing their patho-logical, ‘over’-immune uninhibited condition. Part personal narrative of being diagnosed with an autoimmune condition, part speculative autoimmune theory inspired by such a diagnosis, the article ultimately calls for a different form of embodiment that is neither negative nor affirmative, and yet is resistant even to itself. (shrink)

Analyzes principal forces that determined the direction of Camus' thought on ethics and political values.