The topic of the present paper is conducting feminist research in South Asia and the way politics works in this process. It is specifically based on the experiences of empirical work done in Kerala, the southernmost state in India, which is unique in being one of the only two states with a strong communist movement. In addition, the numerous religions, castes, and communities of the Kerala region can be profitably analyzed in connection with the policies of the Left, emerging feminist (...) movements, and mechanisms of power. As an indigenous, feminist activist and researcher, I have been working with a Western feminist scholar who is also a university professor, in a project concerning marriage and inheritance in Kerala in the twentieth century. The project is based on various archival materials, as well as interviews with families of different classes and communities, politicians, and religious leaders. The purpose of the paper is to elaborate upon methodological experiences gained from my collaboration as a research assistant for the Western scholar. Specifically, I wish to explore the way power, as based on gender, ethnicity, generation, and the researcher’s position in society, operated when data was collected and interviews carried out. The main thesis of my study is that, through our cooperation, we managed to overcome difficulties that each of us, working alone, would not have been able to surmount. Our production of “knowledge” must be seen in the light of the complex political and cultural power relations prevailing in Kerala, as well as of our own position in society and the role we each played within the research project itself. (shrink)

The conceptualizations of meanings of existence started with the ontological or metaphysical debates in philosophy. Then at the peak of modern times, the school of existentialism dealt with the issue of human existence particularly by citing individual freedom. In all these series of philosophizing, the human being was considered as a singular type entity who thinks and acts in the same way. So, the historical development of philosophical thinking has not brought enough solutions, with regard to the existential issues of (...) human females and other genders. It is through the end of the modern period only, the identities of caste, class, religion, region, ethnicity, gender etc. were taken into serious scrutiny to see the intersectional issues while conceptualizing the ontic status of humans. This article is a look at these aspects of philosophizing in general, and in particular, it analyses the issues of gendered experiences of human beings in cultures. This will lead to examining the meanings of existence for women as a category with reference to the modern writings of Simone de Beauvoir. The possible existence of many genders and the issues in conceiving an essentialist category called woman or man, are being scrutinized in this article through the postmodern writings of Judith Butler. To analyze the experience of genders, this study draws references from various feminist philosophers and concentrates on the existentialist phenomenological writings of Simone de Beauvoir and the deontological phenomenology of Judith Butler. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper is an analysis on the phenomenological notions of ethics, which Simon de Beauvoir calls as the ethics of ambiguity. Human beings always face ambiguity in their situations of lived world. As far as one is living the life, the ambiguity is unavoidable in her/his actions. Though one tries to hold on the philosophy of internality, to assert no external things are affecting in defining her/his actions or ethical positions, the ambiguity prevails. Simone de Beauvoir’s noted book, Ethics (...) of Ambiguity established that ethics could be understood only in real life contexts. This paper is an attempt to see her arguments from phenomenological approach to maintain that her ethics is more phenomenological than existential. This is a study on ethics from a feminist point of view too, to critically approach the absolute moral values of systems of hierarchy as patriarchy that divide human beings as oppressed and oppressor. -/- . (shrink)

Resemblances obtain not only between objects but between properties. Resemblances of the latter sort - in particular resemblances between quantitative properties - prove to be the downfall of a well-known theory of universals, namely the one presented by David Armstrong. This paper examines Armstrong's efforts to account for such resemblances within the framework of his theory and also explores several extensions of that theory. All of them fail.

With twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy of science’s unfolding acceptance of the nature of scientific inquiry being value-laden, the persistent worry has been that there are no means for legitimate negotiation of the social or non-epistemic values that enter into science. The rejection of the value-free ideal in science has thereby been coupled with the spectres of indiscriminate relativism and bias in scientific inquiry. I challenge this view in the context of recently expressed concerns regarding Canada's death of evidence controversy. The (...) worry, raised by Stathis Psillos, is that as constructivist accounts of science demoted the previously secure status of evidence for drawing justified conclusions in science, we were left with no rational delineation between the right and wrong values for science. The implication for the death of evidence controversy is that we may have no rational grounds for claiming that the Canadian Government is wrong to interfere with scientific enterprise. But he does offer another avenue for reaching the conclusion that the wrong social values are directing the current stifling of some sectors of Canadian science. Psillos draws from standpoint epistemologies to devise a salient defence of ‘valuing evidence’ as a universalizable social value. That is, government bodies ought to enable scientific research via adequate funding as well as political non-interference. In this paper, I counter that non-epistemic values can be rationally evaluated and that standpoint epistemology’s universalizable standpoint provides an inadequate framework for negotiating social values in science. Regarding, I draw from the evidence-based medicine debate in philosophy of medicine and from feminist empiricist investigations into the science–values relationship in order to make the argument for empirically driven value arbitration. If social values can be rationally chosen in the context of justification, then we can have grounds for charging the Canadian leadership with being ‘at war with science’. I further argue that my recommended empiricist methodology is preferable to Psillos’s search for universalizable perspectives for negotiating social values in science because the latter method permits little more than the trivial conclusion that evidence is valuable to science. (shrink)

The standard counterexamples to David Lewis’s account of intrinsicality involve two sorts of properties: identity properties and necessary properties. Proponents of the account have attempted to deflect these counterexamples in a number of ways. This paper argues that none of these moves are legitimate. Furthermore, this paper argues that no account along the lines of Lewis’s can succeed, for an adequate account of intrinsicality must be sensitive to hyperintensional distinctions among properties.

The public rejection of scientific claims is widely recognized by scientific and governmental institutions to be threatening to modern democratic societies. Intense conflict between science and the public over diverse health and environmental issues have invited speculation by concerned officials regarding both the source of and the solution to the problem of public resistance towards scientific and policy positions on such hot-button issues as global warming, genetically modified crops, environmental toxins, and nuclear waste disposal. The London Royal Society’s influential report (...) “Public Understanding of Science”, which spearheaded the now-thriving area of science... (shrink)

Because “evidence” is at issue in evidence-based medicine (EBM), the critical responses to the movement have taken up themes from post-positivist philosophy of science to demonstrate the untenability of the objectivist account of evidence. While these post-positivist critiques seem largely correct, I propose that when they focus their analyses on what counts as evidence, the critics miss important and desirable pragmatic features of the evidence-based approach. This article redirects critical attention toward EBM’s rigid hierarchy of evidence as the culprit of (...) its objectionable epistemic practices. It reframes the EBM discourse in light of a distinction between objectivist and pragmatic epistemology, which allows for a more nuanced analysis of EBM than previously offered: one that is not either/or in its evaluation of the decision-making technology as either iconoclastic or creedal. -/- . (shrink)

While most of healthcare research and practice fully endorses evidence-based healthcare, a minority view borrows popular themes from philosophy of science like underdetermination and value-ladenness to question the legitimacy of the evidence-based movement’s philosophical underpinnings. While the feminist origins go unacknowledged, those critics adopt a feminist reading of the “gap argument” to challenge the perceived objectivism of evidence-based practice. From there, the critics seem to despair over the “subjective elements” that values introduce to clinical reasoning, demonstrating that they do not (...) subscribe to feminist science studies’ normative program——where contextual values can enable good science and justified decisions. In this paper, I investigate why it is that the critics of evidence-based medicine adopt feminist science’s characterization of the problem but resist the productive solutions offered by those same theorists. I suggest that the common feminist empiricist appeal to idealized epistemic communities is impractical for those working within the current biomedical context and instead offer an alternate stream of feminist research into the empirical content of values (found in the work of Elizabeth Anderson and Sharyn Clough) as a more helpful recourse for facilitating the important task of legitimate and justified clinical decision-making. I use a case study on clinical decision-making to illustrate the fruitfulness of the latter feminist empiricist framework. -/- See response by Sharyn Clough: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-1aN See reply by Maya Goldenberg: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-1oY. (shrink)

In "Does Four-Dimensionalism Explain Coincidence" Mark Moyer argues that there is no reason to prefer the four-dimensionalist (or perdurantist) explanation of coincidence to the three-dimensionalist (or endurantist) explanation. I argue that Moyer's formulations of perdurantism and endurantism lead him to overlook the perdurantist's advantage. A more satisfactory formulation of these views reveals a puzzle of coincidence that Moyer does not consider, and the perdurantist's treatment of this puzzle is clearly preferable.

The philosophical significance of rhythm in the United States has been undermined from both sides of what Adorno and Horkheimer called the ‘dialectic of enlightenment’. When rhythm has not been falsely exalted, promising a fetishised, racialised ‘return’ to the body, it has been devalued through the tainted associations of rhythmic synchronisation with fascist regimes and the demand for compliance. In this article, I engage these issues as they inflect the politics of musical form. Adorno’s notorious critique of jazz – developed (...) across a wide range of essays spanning three decades (1933-1962) – has been rightly disparaged, but his concept of the politics of metric regularity has not been repudiated. In what follows, I provide an analysis of how metric regularity works for Adorno as a concept – its limitations and presuppositions. Adorno opens up new critical thought about rhythm by taking seriously the problem of the bass drum in jazz and its historical and structural relation to the military march. However, he gets seriously wrong the different implications of marching rhythm for African-American (and therefore American) history, failing to understand its radical difference from the dangers of European fascism for its victims. -/- Transnational rhythmic forms in the black diaspora (including the United States) and the interracial experiences that these forms enable, at least as in-principle possibilities, continually contest the ‘the divisions between life and thought’ that have been taken for granted by majoritarian philosophy in the West. From this perspective, the segregation of intellect from feel (a technical term among musicians to indicate those normatively right aesthetic choices that nevertheless emerge in excess of predetermined rules is not tenable given the polyrhythmic background that must be presupposed in order for any piece of diasporic music, including and especially in the United States, to be intelligible. (shrink)

The precondition of any feminist politics – a usable category of ‘woman’ – has proved to be difficult to construct, even proposed to be impossible, given the ‘problem of exclusion’. This is the inevitable exclusion of at least some women, as their lives or experiences do not fit into the necessary and sufficient condition(s) that denotes group membership. In this paper, I propose that the problem of exclusion arises not because of inappropriate category membership criteria, but because of the presumption (...) that categories can only be organised by identity relations or shared properties among their members. This criterion of sameness as well as the characterisation of this exclusion as essentialism attests to a metaphysics that is not conducive to resistance and liberatory projects. Following a strain of hybrid thinking in feminist and post-colonial theory, I outline an alternative pluralist logic that confronts oppressive binaries that impede theory work in gender, sexuality, and race theory, and limit political action and resistance. The problem of exclusion is neither irresolvable nor is it essentialism. Instead it is a denial of subjectivity due to pseudodualistic self/Other dichotomies that can be resisted by adopting a new categorial logic. While this paper focuses on the specific problem of formulating a category of ‘woman’, it has implications for other areas of gender, critical race, and postcolonial theory. Rather than working toward an inclusive category founded on sameness, theorists need to develop independent and positive categories grounded in difference. Our current categorial logic does not permit such a project, and therefore a new metaphysics must be adopted. (shrink)

In accordance with the critical women’s health literature recounting the ways that women are encouraged to submit themselves to various sorts of health “imperatives”, I investigate the messages tacitly conveyed to women in “campaigns for the cure” and breast cancer awareness efforts, which, I argue, overemphasizes a “positive attitude”, healthy lifestyle, and cure rather than prevention of this life-threatening disease. I challenge that the message of hope pervading breast cancer discourse silences the despair felt by many women, furthers a tacit (...) blaming for disease infliction via a rhetoric of personal responsibility, underemphasizes other cogent health determinants like environmental toxicity, and undermines legitimate critiques of current biomedical practices like widespread mammography. While finding a cure for breast cancer is a laudable and worthwhile healthcare goal that can understandably be shared by women’s health activists, corporate sponsors, and the medical community, this paper resists the current formation of campaigns for the cure and “pink ribbon activism” in general. (shrink)

In Clough’s reply paper to me (http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-1aN), she laments how feminist calls for diversity within scientific communities are inadvertently sidelined by our shared feminist empiricist prescriptions. She offers a novel justification for diversity within epistemic communities and challenges me to accept this addendum to my prior prescriptions for biomedical research communities (Goldenberg 2013) on the grounds that they are consistent with the epistemic commitments that I already endorse. In this response, I evaluate and accept her challenge.

We live in an age of evidence-based healthcare, where the concept of evidence has been avidly and often uncritically embraced as a symbol of legitimacy, truth, and justice. By letting the evidence dictate healthcare decision making from the bedside to the policy level, the normative claims that inform decision making appear to be negotiated fairly—without subjectivity, prejudice, or bias. Thus, the term ‘‘evidence-based’’ is typically read in the health sciences as the empirically adequate standard of reasonable practice and a means (...) for increasing certainty. Supporters believe that evidence-based medicine (EBM) can introduce rational order to the deliberative processes of healthcare decision making. It is perhaps puzzling, then, to come across critical perspectives (typically arising from the humanities and the more theory-driven social sciences) raising concerns about a seeming technogovernance being introduced by this deferral to the evidence where power interests can be obfuscated by way of technical resolve. The critics holding this minority view argue that technological solutions to problems of knowledge and practice cannot replace medicine’s normative content. Against EBM’s democratic leanings toward transparency and accountability, medical criteria alone cannot decide valueladen ethically charged decisions. This paper attempts to explain and evaluate this important debate in the philosophy of medicine, focusing specifically on the dispute over 'evidence-based women's health'. (shrink)

What makes a culture and what are the cultural traits identified by people are important questions to be developed more within diaspora studies. This article proposes a critical inquiry into the ways of defining socio-cultural traits through the discussions with Indian diaspora living in the context of Western culture. It suggests hypothesis that there is a possibility of hybrid cultures between the Eastern and Western. The ontological status of being ‘Indian’ would be different while living in India and abroad, and (...) the cultural ontology in those subject positions would also vary to produce hybrid cultures. Theories of migration, culture and gender constitute a background and framework in this study. Reflections on cultural identity and cultural traits are obtained in this study through direct interviews with diaspora Indians living in Germany. In this process of analyses, the methodology of gender is adopted along with other methods of qualitative research to see how the socio-cultural perspectives change after migration to Western cultures, and how those are different among men and women. The preliminary argument derived in this article is that cultural traits can be traced in aspects of people’s daily life, but not only through dominant art forms, literature or historical monuments. It is done with a critical perspective on the existing dominant methods of defining culture. This study has a critic on existing methodologies that are Eurocentric, male-centric and neglecting the individual and mundane experiences of people who live in varied cultural contexts with complex cultural identities. Key words: Culture, Gender, Migration, Germany, Indian Diaspora, Hybridity. (shrink)

This study contributes to the limited literature on VAT’s impact on student populations by assessing the financial strain on university students in Oman. The research provides novel insights into policymaking, suggesting VAT exemptions for essential educational goods and proposing financial literacy programs for mitigating the adverse effects of VAT which employs chi-square tests and regression analysis to quantify the financial effects of VAT on students' purchasing behavior, revealing that VAT negatively impacts purchasing power with a statistically significant p-value (< 0.05). (...) The findings highlight substantial financial strain on students, particularly those in lower-income brackets, prompting policy recommendations for VAT exemptions on essential educational goods and the inclusion of financial literacy programs aimed at helping students mitigate the tax's adverse effects. This study evaluates the financial implications of the Value Added Tax (VAT) introduced in Oman in 2021, focusing on its impact on consumer behavior among university students at A’sharqiyah University. Utilizing a quantitative methodology, including chi-square tests and regression analysis, and a sample of 53 students, the research investigates the effects of VAT on purchasing power and consumption patterns. The findings demonstrate a significant disruption to students' financial capacity, with the majority reporting challenges in affording essential educational materials. By contributing to the limited body of literature on VAT’s effects on low-income populations, this study provides valuable insights into how students rationalize their consumption and cope with increased financial strain. Policy recommendations include VAT exemptions for educational goods and the implementation of comprehensive financial literacy programs to help vulnerable groups manage the tax's adverse effects. (shrink)

There is currently a theoretical tension between young children’s failure in False Belief Tasks (FBTs) and their success in a variety of other tasks that also seem to require the ability to ascribe false beliefs to agents. We try to explain this tension by the hypothesis that in the FBT, children think they are asked what the agent should do in the circumstances and not what the agent will do. We explain why this hypothesis is plausible. We examined the hypothesis (...) in two experiments, each involving a new task. In the first task, the hypothesised misunderstanding of the question leads to failure without the need to ascribe a false belief, and we show that failure in this new task is correlated with failure in the FBT. In the second task, passing which requires ascribing a false belief to an agent, and for which we have partial yet encouraging results, the children are asked a question which is unlikely to be misunderstood. Children pass this task much more often than they do a standard FBT. The mentioned tension is thus resolved. We conclude that the so-called False Belief Task probably does not check the ability to ascribe false beliefs but rather linguistic development. (shrink)

This paper compares two readings of Baruch Spinoza – those of Gilles Deleuze and Rama Kanta Tripathi – with a particular focus on three features of Spinoza’s philosophy: the relationship between substance and attribute; the problem of acosmism and unity; and the problem of the parallelism of attributes. Deleuze and Tripathi’s understanding of these three issues in Spinoza’s thought illustrates for us their own concerns with becoming over substance and māyā, respectively. This investigation provides not just two interesting and contradictory (...) interpretations of Spinoza, but also gives us insight into Deleuze’s metaphysics and Tripathi’s Vedāntic philosophy. (shrink)

Arthur Danto asserts that Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington embodies the rhetoric paradigm of internal beauty’s meaning. However, the relationship to the Kant’s pulchritudo adhaerens is not an easy one: Danto’s recalls against the self-referent formalism of Greenberg’s Modernism and his tacit issues about the environmental non-monumentality of Richard Serra’s Minimalism, are, most importantly, haunted by the unquestioned spectral logic of the image embodiment. The beholders’ reflecting shape on the funeral Wall is, finally, both a pathetic index (...) and a medial incarnation–e.g. a Verkörperung–of the underworld. (shrink)

The human mind possesses matchless creativity and extensive capacity to create its own reality. It has a remarkable capability for contemplation, reflection and even manipulation. Sadly, the excellent human mind has been polluted by the rituals, dogmas, and deceptions of cultures, religions and politics. Its fickleness leads to its being held captive by maya (material world). In his hymns, Guru Tegh Bahadur enunciates that the fickleness of the mind is the primary cause of unhappiness and failure in achieving our (...) prescribed life goals. The Guru urges that a human being can restrain and channelize one's mental energies, by diverting one's mind from its animalistic tendencies and turning it to the mind's innate longing for spiritual enlightenment. He asserts that with the continual longing for the Divine Grace and having a compassionate and contented attitude, one can achieve the goal of harnessing one's mind. (shrink)

This album brings together photos from a documentary trip I made in December 2008-January 2009 in Central America (Guatemala and Honduras), to discover the old Maya civilization. In one of those blurry days caused by Pacaya volcano’s debris and ash, along the ruins of Petén, I believe I must have had an encounter with the Maya deity Kʼawiil….

Arthur Danto asserts that Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington really embodies the beauty of his meaning. For him, the Memorial’s “internal beauty” is felt and read because she is built as a text by the rhetoric of enthymeme, as a syllogism based on some tacit knowledges and highly probables communplaces. However, the relationship to the Kant’s pulchritudo adhaerens and philosophy of architecture is not an easy one : Danto rejects as unreadable the self-referent formalism of Greenberg’s Modernism (...) and the environmental non-monumentality of Richard Serra’s Minimalism, but the agency of the Memorial’s shared internal beauty is haunted by an unquestioned spectral logic. Actually, the image embodiment in this work can always exceed the rhetoric of reconnaissance supported by the syllogistic rhetoric and disturb the identity framework of the nord-american community. The beholders’ reflecting shape on the Memorial can become, finally, an unreadable and pathetic index, or be perceived as a figural imprint, ephemeral and troubling ; these disembodied pictures can achieve a medial incarnation – e.g. a Verkörperung – of the underworld. (shrink)

The Theosophical Society, founded in New York in 1875, was, at the turn of the Twentieth Century, a global phenomenon with 100,000 members. New Age philosopher Dr Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was appointed as the first Secretary General of the German Section of the Theosophical Society on 19 October 1902. The Theosophical Society offered Rudolf Steiner a platform, a ready-made audience, infrastructure, and the insider experience of the world’s leading New Age spiritual society. The success of the Theosophical Society demonstrated that (...) there was a public appetite to hear about reincarnation, karma, maya, kamaloca, and other Eastern and alternative spiritual ideas. The Theosophical Society provided Rudolf Steiner a capable, multilingual, and determined personal assistant, Marie von Sivers (1867-1948). For Rudolf Steiner the Theosophical Society offered the perfect training ground for what would be, a decade later, his life’s work, the Anthroposophical Society. Rudolf Steiner grew the membership of the German Section of the Theosophical Society from 377 in 1905 to 3,702 in 1913. He earned cash from ticketing of his lectures and his Mystery plays, and from book sales of his personal publishing house, ‘Philosophisch-Theosophischer Verlag’. Another enterprise, the ‘Johannes-Bau-Verein’ (Johannes Building Association) was founded in 1911, independent of the Theosophical Society, to build a theatre in Munich to present Rudolf Steiner's plays. The building application was rejected by the Munich municipal authorities in 1912. The resistance to a build in Munich, provided impetus for the move to build in Dornach, Switzerland. The Anthroposophical Society was founded 28 December 1912 in Cologne, Germany. Most of the members of the German Section of the Theosophical Society members followed Rudolf Steiner into the Anthroposophical Society. The Theosophical Society expelled Rudolf Steiner from the Theosophical Society on 7 March 1913. The foundation stone for the Goetheanum (then still called the ‘Johannesbau’) was laid 20 September 1913. The Theosophical Society had served as the ideal prototype and springboard for founding and growing the Anthroposophical Society. (shrink)

contents -/- ONT vol 1 i. short review: Beyond the Black Rainbow ii. as you die, hold one thought iii. short review: LA JETÉE -/- ONT vol 2 i. maya means ii. short review: SANS SOLEIL iii. vocab iv. eros has an underside v. short review: In the Mood for Love -/- ONT vol 3 i. weed weakens / compels me ii. an Ender's Game after-party iii. playroom is a realm of the dead iv. a precise german History v. (...) short review: STATUES ALSO DIE vi. Kenneth Clark, curator for Fascism vii. a protest poem, in industry lit viii. Lawrence and the English Romance -/- ONT vol 4 i. short review: The Eyes of Tammy Faye ii. vR is efficient R iii. all thru Asia, robes for monks iv. same of God, and of the one God sent v. i thought of the Messiah / muse would be vi. conscience is strong vii. a monk's exalted end -/- ONT vol 5 -/- i. for Shakespeare's Richard the Third ii. the truth is i pass over so many words iii. the boori nazar / nadhar iv. i've awe for jihaad v. short review: Hail, Caesar! vi. a minute of Nothing, gone from YouTube vii. we were rivalrous friends, again viii. my bardo pdf ix. within i'm a weak old mandarin -/- ONT vol 6 i. short review: The Intern ii. the confusion of Chinatown iii. we'll remember water, in Theology iv. Respironics versus ResMed v. i'd bet my life for what vi. the Mad Max deity vii. they'd kill my rat, not heal him -/- ONT vol 7 i. Austen would eroticize all life ii. Merchant/Ivory, a name oddly right iii. Ellie Arroway / Agent Starling iv. abattoir / l’abattoir / laboratoire v. von Neumann's brain an anomaly vi. was terrified of death, delighted in the a-bomb vii. the Greatest Brain is variously named -/- ONT vol 8 i. the day they shot the sacrifice ii. Yay or Nay, on Animal Testing iii. an ought is an is / an is is an ought iv. Behaviorism is for zombies v. a finding from the neuro-lab, on empathy vi. i’ve never had discernible abs vii. a cowardice i'm assenting to perpetually -/- ONT vol 9 i. Day of the Locust / Triffids ii. we're wide on a Paramount soundstage iii. HOLLYWOOD, an ecologic history iv. yet one more site of end-time art v. he's "a bookworm with bulging lobes" vi. apartment is my state of being apart vii. enlightenment means a weight's release -/- ONT lates and xtras i. re Gödel's ontological argument ii. deep in pi's numeric noise iii. from Nothing, something iv. endless in the wrong direction, tragic v. they give you all Eternity to answer vi. what of God's mercy? vii. informed consent and prayer viii. i won't live on. a deed i've done may ix. my selective memory x. Janus means: in close-up foam, two faces xi. a liveable world is a readable world xii. what Supervenes from this? xiii. at each extreme our naming is anachronism xiv. Cat is a collapsing of the wave-function xv. diminishing returns in the history of Experiment xvi. all those undershared Nobels xvii. ice preserves the Cold from heat xviii. a desert spreads xix. Pinker's wit, on jokes xx. Rome surrounds St. Paul / Paul is now the center xxi. each is a gathering Ministry xxii. white boy shot execution-style xxiii. the McDonald's Statement of Claim xxiv. first & last: Don Quixote / Ulysses xxv. The Summer of Rave xxvi. this electro is intrinsically anonymous xxvii. all thru Asia, Drake-Rihanna xxviii. WHO IS BETTER: PLATON OR KANT? (shrink)

A model of human consciousness is presented here in terms of physics and electronics using Upanishadic awareness. The form of Atman proposed in the Upanishads in relation to human consciousness as oscillating psychic energy-presence and its virtual or unreal energy reflection maya, responsible for mental energy and mental time-space are discussed. Analogy with Fresnel’s bi-prism experimental set up in physical optics is used to state, describe and understand the form, structure and function of Atman and maya, the ingredients (...) of human consciousness. A description of phases of mind in terms of conscious states and transformation of mental energy is given. Four states of consciousness and four modes of language communication and understanding processes are also given. Implications of above scientific awareness of Upanishadic wisdom to the modern scientific fields of physiological psychology, cognitive sciences, mind-machine modeling and natural language comprehension are suggested. -/- . (shrink)

This thirteenth volume of Collected Papers is an eclectic tome of 88 papers in various fields of sciences, such as astronomy, biology, calculus, economics, education and administration, game theory, geometry, graph theory, information fusion, decision making, instantaneous physics, quantum physics, neutrosophic logic and set, non-Euclidean geometry, number theory, paradoxes, philosophy of science, scientific research methods, statistics, and others, structured in 17 chapters (Neutrosophic Theory and Applications; Neutrosophic Algebra; Fuzzy Soft Sets; Neutrosophic Sets; Hypersoft Sets; Neutrosophic Semigroups; Neutrosophic Graphs; Superhypergraphs; Plithogeny; (...) Information Fusion; Statistics; Decision Making; Extenics; Instantaneous Physics; Paradoxism; Mathematica; Miscellanea), comprising 965 pages, published between 2005-2022 in different scientific journals, by the author alone or in collaboration with the following 110 co-authors (alphabetically ordered) from 26 countries: Abduallah Gamal, Sania Afzal, Firoz Ahmad, Muhammad Akram, Sheriful Alam, Ali Hamza, Ali H. M. Al-Obaidi, Madeleine Al-Tahan, Assia Bakali, Atiqe Ur Rahman, Sukanto Bhattacharya, Bilal Hadjadji, Robert N. Boyd, Willem K.M. Brauers, Umit Cali, Youcef Chibani, Victor Christianto, Chunxin Bo, Shyamal Dalapati, Mario Dalcín, Arup Kumar Das, Elham Davneshvar, Bijan Davvaz, Irfan Deli, Muhammet Deveci, Mamouni Dhar, R. Dhavaseelan, Balasubramanian Elavarasan, Sara Farooq, Haipeng Wang, Ugur Halden, Le Hoang Son, Hongnian Yu, Qays Hatem Imran, Mayas Ismail, Saeid Jafari, Jun Ye, Ilanthenral Kandasamy, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, Darjan Karabašević, Abdullah Kargın, Vasilios N. Katsikis, Nour Eldeen M. Khalifa, Madad Khan, M. Khoshnevisan, Tapan Kumar Roy, Pinaki Majumdar, Sreepurna Malakar, Masoud Ghods, Minghao Hu, Mingming Chen, Mohamed Abdel-Basset, Mohamed Talea, Mohammad Hamidi, Mohamed Loey, Mihnea Alexandru Moisescu, Muhammad Ihsan, Muhammad Saeed, Muhammad Shabir, Mumtaz Ali, Muzzamal Sitara, Nassim Abbas, Munazza Naz, Giorgio Nordo, Mani Parimala, Ion Pătrașcu, Gabrijela Popović, K. Porselvi, Surapati Pramanik, D. Preethi, Qiang Guo, Riad K. Al-Hamido, Zahra Rostami, Said Broumi, Saima Anis, Muzafer Saračević, Ganeshsree Selvachandran, Selvaraj Ganesan, Shammya Shananda Saha, Marayanagaraj Shanmugapriya, Songtao Shao, Sori Tjandrah Simbolon, Florentin Smarandache, Predrag S. Stanimirović, Dragiša Stanujkić, Raman Sundareswaran, Mehmet Șahin, Ovidiu-Ilie Șandru, Abdulkadir Șengür, Mohamed Talea, Ferhat Taș, Selçuk Topal, Alptekin Ulutaș, Ramalingam Udhayakumar, Yunita Umniyati, J. Vimala, Luige Vlădăreanu, Ştefan Vlăduţescu, Yaman Akbulut, Yanhui Guo, Yong Deng, You He, Young Bae Jun, Wangtao Yuan, Rong Xia, Xiaohong Zhang, Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas, Zayen Azzouz Omar, Xiaohong Zhang, Zhirou Ma.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬. (shrink)

Interpretation of feminist literature with the help of Capability approach unveils different possibilities. It authenticates the truth of the capability theory that stands for the empowerment of human beings. It underlines the necessity of individual and collective journey of women for their liberation. It brings forward the role of personal narrative while aiming for emancipation. Moreover, the approach offers a better way of interpreting feminist literature which reveals the shattered and shining aspects of women’s existence.

The evidence-based medicine (EBM) movement is touted as a new paradigm in medical education and practice, a description that carries with it an enthusiasm for science that has not been seen since logical positivism flourished (circa 1920–1950). At the same time, the term ‘‘evidence-based medicine’’ has a ring of obviousness to it, as few physicians, one suspects, would claim that they do not attempt to base their clinical decision-making on available evidence. However, the apparent obviousness of EBM can and should (...) be challenged on the grounds of how ‘evidence’ has been problematised in the philosophy of science. EBM enthusiasm, it follows, ought to be tempered. The post-positivist, feminist, and phenomenological philosophies of science that are examined in this paper contest the seemingly unproblematic nature of evidence that underlies EBM by emphasizing different features of the social nature of science. The appeal to the authority of evidence that characterizes evidence-based practices does not increase objectivity but rather obscures the subjective elements that inescapably enter all forms of human inquiry. The seeming common sense of EBM only occurs because of its assumed removal from the social context of medical practice. In the current age where the institutional power of medicine is suspect, a model that represents biomedicine as politically disinterested or merely scientific should give pause. (shrink)

As the quality movement in health care now enters its fourth decade, the language of quality is ubiquitous. Practitioners, organizations, and government agencies alike vociferously testify their commitments to quality and accept numerous forms of governance aimed at improving quality of care. Remarkably, the powerful phrase ‘‘quality of care’’ is rarely defined in the health care literature. Instead it operates as an accepted and assumed goal worth pursuing. The status of evidence-based medicine, for instance, hinges on its ability to improve (...) quality of care, and efforts are made by both proponents and detractors to unpack the contents and outcomes of evidence-based practice while the contents of ‘‘quality of care’’ are presumed to be understood. Because the goals of medicine are far from obvious, this paper investigates the neglected term, ‘‘quality of care,’’ in an effort to understand what it is that health care practices are so uncritically assumed to be striving for. Finding lack of consensus on the terminology in the quality literature, I propose that the term operates rhetorically by way of persuasive appeal (and lack of descriptive meaning). Unsatisfied that ‘‘quality of care’’ operates as a mere buzzword in morally contentious debates over resource allocation and duties of care, I implore health care communities to go beyond mere commitments to quality and, instead, to focus attention on the difficult task of specifying what counts as quality care within an economically constrained health care system. (shrink)

Questions regarding the formation of the Universe and ‘what was there’ before it came to existence have been of great interest to mankind at all times. Several suggestions have been presented during the ages – mostly assuming a preliminary state prior to creation. Nevertheless, theories that require initial conditions are not considered complete, since they lack an explanation of what created such conditions. We therefore propose the ‘Creatio Ex Nihilo’ (CEN) theory, aimed at describing the origin of the Universe from (...) ‘nothing’ in information terms. The suggested framework does not require amendments to the laws of physics: but rather provides a new scenario to the Universe initiation process, and from that point merges with state-of-the-art cosmological models. The paper is aimed at providing a first step towards a more complete model of the Universe creation – proving that creation Ex Nihilo is feasible. Further adjustments, elaborations, formalisms and experiments are required to formulate and support the theory. (shrink)

Abstract: Ensuring the proactive detection of transaction risks is paramount for financial institutions, particularly in the context of managing credit scores. In this study, we compare different machine learning algorithms to effectively and efficiently. The algorithms used in this study were: MLogisticRegressionCV, ExtraTreeClassifier,LGBMClassifier,AdaBoostClassifier, GradientBoostingClassifier,Perceptron,RandomForestClassifier,KNeighborsClassifier,BaggingClassifier, DecisionTreeClassifier, CalibratedClassifierCV, LabelPropagation, Deep Learning. The dataset was collected from Kaggle depository. It consists of 164 rows and 8 columns. The best classifier with unbalanced dataset was the LogisticRegressionCV. The Accuracy 100.0%, precession 100.0%,Recall100.0% and the F1-score (...) 100.0%. However, the best classifier with balanced dataset was the LogisticRegressionCV. The Accuracy 100.0%, precession 100.0%, Recall 100.0% and the F1-score 100.0%. (shrink)

Dreaming has been a subject for debate for thousands of years as to what it entails and how it affects daily living. This paper goes into depth about if dreaming holds reality within, and if morality should be taken into consideration.

Abstract: People all over the world have been drinking tea for thousands of centuries, and for good reason. Many types of teas can help you stay healthy by boosting your immune system, reducing inflammation, and even preventing cancer and heart disease. There is sufficient material to show that regularly consuming tea can improve your health over the long term. A deep learning model that categorizes tea disorders has been completed. When focusing on the tea, we must also focus on and (...) take into account the diseases that harm it. The aim of this paper is to diagnose tea diseases based on a dataset containing 8000 picture and 8 classes .The model gave the final accuracy test with an F1-score of 99.41% in an estimated time 3 second, as with these results it proved its effectiveness and good ability in the classification test. (shrink)

У статті здійснено аналіз понять комунікативної тактики, схарактеризовано білінгвальність комунікативної тактики у текстах українськомовного маркетингового дискурсу на матеріалі українських веб-ресурсів.

Background: Depression (major depressive disorder) is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act. Fortunately, it is also treatable. Depression causes feelings of sadness and/or a loss of interest in activities once enjoyed. It can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems and can decrease a person’s ability to function at work and at home. Depression affects an estimated one in 15 adults (6.7%) in any given (...) year. And one in six people (16.6%) will experience depression at some time in their life. Depression can strike at any time, but on average, first appears during the late teens to mid-20s. Women are more likely than men to experience depression. Some studies show that one-third of women will experience a major depressive episode in their lifetime. Objectives: The main goal of this expert system is to get the appropriate diagnosis of disease and the correct treatment and give the appropriate method of treatment through several tips that concern the disease and how to treat it and we will see it through the application on the expert system. Methods: in this paper the design of the proposed Expert System which was produced to help Psychologist in diagnosing depression disease through its symptoms such as: a loss of energy, a change in appetite, sleeping more or less, anxiety, reduced concentration, indecisiveness, restlessness, feelings of worthlessness, guilt or hopelessness and thoughts of self-harm or suicide. The proposed expert system presents an overview about depression disease is given, the cause of diseases is outlined and the treatment of disease whenever possible is given out. SL5 Object Expert System language was used for designing and implementing the proposed expert system. Results: The proposed depression disease diagnosis expert system was evaluated by psychologist students and they were satisfied with its performance. Conclusions: The Proposed expert system is very useful for psychologist, patients with depression and newly graduated psychologist. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the critical success factors and investigate the benefits that might be gained once implementing Electronic Customer Relationship Management at HEI from employee perspective. The study conducted at Al Quds Open University in Palestine and data collected from (300) employee through a questionnaire which consist of four variables. A number of statistical tools were intended for hypotheses testing and data analysis, including Spearman correlation coefficient for Validity, reliability correlation using Cronbach’s alpha, and Frequency (...) and Descriptive analysis. The overall findings of the current study show that all the features were important for staff and it was critical success factors, at the same time, websites were providing all the features discussed by the theory whereas staff showed their willingness to use those features if provided. It is also discovered that implementing Electronic Customer Relationship Management can cause staff retention, were provided efficiently and needed to be improved. Research limitations: The survey findings were based on QOU employee in Palestine, UAE and KSA branches not included in the study. (shrink)

This paper aims at helping trainees to overcome the difficulties they face when dealing with Arduino platform by describing the design of a desktop based intelligent tutoring system. The main idea of this system is a systematic introduction into the concept of Arduino platform. The system shows the circuit boards of Arduino that can be purchased at low cost or assembled from freely-available plans; and an open-source development environment and library for writing code to control the board topic of Arduino (...) platform. The system is adaptive with the trainee’s individual progress. The system functions as a special tutor who deals with trainees according to their levels and skills. Evaluation of the system has been applied on professional and unprofessional trainees in this field and the results were good. (shrink)

Abstract: Smoke detectors are critical devices for early fire detection and life-saving interventions. This research paper explores the application of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) in smoke detection systems. The study aims to develop a robust and accurate smoke detection model using ANNs. Surprisingly, the results indicate a 100% accuracy rate, suggesting promising potential for ANNs in enhancing smoke detection technology. However, this paper acknowledges the need for a comprehensive evaluation beyond accuracy. It discusses potential challenges, such as overfitting, dataset size, (...) and class imbalance, and presents strategies employed to address these issues. Additionally, the paper emphasizes the importance of alternative evaluation metrics, including precision, recall, and F1-score, to assess the model's performance comprehensively. Detailed information regarding the model architecture, data preprocessing, and hyperparameter tuning is provided to enhance the reproducibility of the research. The study also discusses ethical considerations and the implications of false positives and false negatives in smoke detection applications. While achieving 100% accuracy is a notable accomplishment, this paper calls for cautious interpretation and further validation in real-world settings. It concludes by highlighting areas for future research and improvement in smoke detection technology, emphasizing the need for practical deployment and the reduction of false alarms. (shrink)

Abstract: The aim behind analyzing Google Stock Prices dataset is to get a fair idea about the relationships between the multiple attributes a day might have, such as: the opening price for each day, the volume of trading for each day. With over a hundred thousand days of trading data, there are some patterns that can help in predicting the future prices. We proposed an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model for predicting the closing prices for future days. The prediction is (...) based on these features (date, opening price, highest price, lowest price, volume), which were used as input variables and (closing price) as output variable for our ANN model. Our model was created, trained, and validated using data set in JNN environment, which its title is “Google-Stock-Prices”. The model evaluation showed that the ANN model is able to predict correctly 99.48% of the validation samples. (shrink)

This paper presents the design and development of intelligent tutoring system for teaching Oracle. The Oracle Intelligent Tutoring System (OITS) examined the power of a new methodology to supporting students in Oracle programming. The system presents the topic of Introduction to Oracle with automatically generated problems for the students to solve. The system is dynamically adapted at run time to the student’s individual progress. An initial evaluation study was done to investigate the effect of using the intelligent tutoring system on (...) the performance of students. (shrink)

Abstract: This study has effectively tackled the critical challenge of accurate calorie prediction in dishes by employing a robust neural network-based model. With an outstanding accuracy rate of 99.32% and a remarkably low average error of 0.009, our model has showcased its proficiency in delivering precise calorie estimations. This achievement equips individuals, healthcare practitioners, and the food industry with a powerful tool to promote healthier dietary choices and elevate awareness of nutrition. Furthermore, our in-depth feature importance analysis has shed light (...) on the indispensable role played by specific nutritional attributes in calorie estimation. This unveiling of crucial factors provides valuable insights for further research endeavors and practical applications. Notably, this research extends its impact beyond the immediate context by making substantial contributions to the domains of nutrition science and dietary planning. It underscores the transformative potential of artificial intelligence, demonstrating how it can revolutionize our approach to food, nutrition, and health. As the world grapples with the challenges of diet-related health issues and environmental concerns, the accuracy and precision achieved in calorie prediction through neural networks represent a significant stride towards more informed and conscientious dietary practices. In this era of data-driven decision-making, our research paves the way for healthier lifestyles, heightened nutritional awareness, and a more health-conscious society. (shrink)

Cardiovascular diseases, including heart disease, pose a significant global health challenge, contributing to a substantial burden on healthcare systems and individuals. Early detection and accurate prediction of heart disease are crucial for timely intervention and improved patient outcomes. This research explores the potential of neural networks in predicting heart disease using a dataset collected from Kaggle, consisting of 1025 samples with 14 distinct features. The study's primary objective is to develop an effective neural network model for binary classification, identifying the (...) presence or absence of heart disease. The neural network architecture includes an input layer, a hidden layer, and an output layer, designed to capture intricate relationships within the dataset. Rigorous training and validation processes, accompanied by data preprocessing steps, ensure the model's robustness and generalization capabilities. The results demonstrate promising performance, with an accuracy of 92% and an average error of 0.062. Moreover, an analysis of feature importance highlights key predictors, including "oldpeak," "thalach," "trestbps," "ca," "thal," "cp," "chol," "sex," "restecg," "age," "slope," "fbs," and "exang." This research contributes to the field of predictive healthcare by leveraging neural networks to enhance heart disease prediction. The developed model offers the potential for early identification of individuals at risk, facilitating timely medical interventions and ultimately improving public health. Further exploration of machine learning techniques in healthcare promises to reshape disease prediction and prevention strategies. (shrink)

We assess the state of thinking about gender identities in computer vision through an analysis of how research papers in gender and facial recognition are designed, what claims they make about trans and non-binary people, what values they espouse, and what they describe as ongoing challenges for the field. In our corpus of 50 research papers, the seven papers that consider trans and non-binary identities use questionable assumptions about medicalization as a measure of transness, about gender transition as a linear (...) and bounded process, and about the concept of gender deception. Otherwise, non-normative gender identities are absent and their consideration is in fact hindered by prevailing research values, particularly deeply embedded ones such as performance and accuracy. We point out how the use of shared datasets calcifies binary conceptions of gender. In the way that the field of computer vision conceives of ongoing challenges for its research, it does not yet face questions that trans and non-binary user experiences pose and often falls back on biologically essentialist notions of sex classification. We make two recommendations: that computer vision researchers undertake interdisciplinary work with researchers who study gender as a socio-cultural phenomenon, and that journal editors and conference organizers do the same in peer review and conference acceptance processes. (shrink)

A new translation and edition of Aristotle's Protrepticus (with critical comments on the fragments) -/- Welcome -/- The Protrepticus was an early work of Aristotle, written while he was still a member of Plato's Academy, but it soon became one of the most famous works in the whole history of philosophy. Unfortunately it was not directly copied in the middle ages and so did not survive in its own manuscript tradition. But substantial fragments of it have been preserved in several (...) works by Iamblichus of Chalcis, a third century A.D. neo-Pythagorean philosopher and educator. On the basis of a close study of Iamblichus' extensive use and excerption of Aristotle's Protrepticus, it is possible to reconstruct the backbone of the lost work, and then to flesh it out with the other surviving reports about the work from antiquity (for example in Alexander of Aphrodisias and other ancient commentators on Aristotle). It is also possible to identify several papyrus fragments of the work, and many references and literary allusions in later authors, especially Cicero, whose own lost dialogue Hortensius was a defense of philosophy modeleld on Aristotle's. (shrink)