Section Of My Paper Research Articles

Radio Cabs - How Do They Work in Delhi?

Radio Cabs cater to the major chunk of the commuters of Delhi from/to airport, railway stations etc. Addressing the concern of safety and hassled fares, radio cabs entered the Delhi transportation sector half a decade ago. Even though the charges are higher unlike those of local taxis and public transport the service delivered by radio cabs is highly reliable. My study examined the Radio cabs market in Delhi through various interviews with people associated with radio cabs. Interviews were conducted with the tourist taxi services also who see the radio cabs to be their contenders. These interviews widened my knowledge scope about the cabs market. Also, I got a clear picture of the norms followed and transactions amongst the driver, company and the customer discussed later in the paper. The role of government is minimal, deals only with the licensing system of the new cab company, registration of the cabs and provision of the electronic meters based upon the category to which the cab company would fall. There are certain problems mentioned customers during the interviews. Therefore, I have proposed solutions to address those issues in the conclusion section of my paper.

The Transcendental Character of Money: An Exposition of Marx’s Argument in the Grundrisse

An exposition of Karl Marx’s argument in the Grundrisse for the logical development of money, this essay is divided into three parts. Since Marx is concerned to distinguish himself and his method from that of the seventeenth century political economists, I begin my paper with a brief reflection on “the scientifically correct method” or the “theoretical method” (Grundrisse 101 and 102). The second part of this paper considers how Marx justifies beginning his reflection with the concept of production in general. To understand the importance that Marx attributes to production, one must also appreciate the way in which distribution, exchange, and consumption belong to the sphere of production. In the remaining pages of this section of my paper, then, I attempt to reconstruct Marx’s argument for the way in which these concepts (distribution, exchange, and consumption) are to be understood in relation to the sphere of production.

Revisiting the Sokal Hoax

In the first section of my paper, I want to consider the “paradoxes of complementarity” between polarised notions such as the quantum concepts of “wave” and “particle.” I will argue that if we treat this topic with all the “gravity” it deserves, we will be able to understand once and for all why this debate (and others like it) can never be completely resolved (paradox intended). In the second section, I want to consider the notion of “parody.” At the end, astute readers must determine for themselves whether I can be trusted to mean what I say, or whether this is all merely ironic, a post-modern hoax, one that undercuts the very boundaries it installs.

Technology and Perception in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire: A Reflection on Time, Space and Memory in the Postmodern Metropolis

Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire is a work that cinematically explores discourses of history and memory in postwar Germany and, since its 1987 inception, most examinations of the film have centered on these aspects. However, little attention has been given to the significant role of technology in Wenders’ film. Emphasized not only in the opening scenes but also throughout the rest of the film, transportation technologies such as airplanes, cars, and trains link the spaces of the city and therefore lie at the heart of Wenders’ Berlin portrait. Furthermore, the self-reflexive nature of Wenders’ work posits film as the quintessential technological medium of storytelling and history, and my paper will thus link theories of technology and perception with those of memory and history. I will begin my paper by elucidating Paul Virilio’s and Jean Baudrillard’s theories of speed and spatiality in postmodern society and will link these theories with the portrayal of transportation technologies in Wings of Desire. The next part turns to Walter Benjamin’s model of space and memory as a more optimistic approach to spatiality in Wenders’ Berlin portrait, and this latter model will prove to be highly significant in my final analysis of Wenders’ film. In particular, I will explore the film’s emphasis on spaces of absence and the way in which this emphasis reveals a model for a new kind of perception and a model for narrating the past. The last section of my paper will stress the way in which Wenders mediates between the communication technologies of transportation and film, and further, between modernity and postmodernity. Ultimately, the technological perception created by transportation technologies (and theorized extensively by postmodernist theorists Baudrillard and Virilio) is redeemed by the medium of film because of its ability to overcome what film theorist Siegfried Kracauer calls the “blind spots of the mind” (53).

Proclus' Theory of Evil: An Ethical Perspective

AbstractWhile the metaphysical aspects of Proclus' theory of evil have recently been studied by a number of scholars, its ethical implications have largely been neglected. In my paper I am analysing the moral consequences that Proclus' concept of evil has, at the same time using the ethical perspective to throw more light on Proclus' ontology. Most importantly, I argue that the difference between bodily and psychic evil is much more substantial that it might seem from On the Existence of Evils alone. Though both kinds of evil are characterized by their 'parasitical existence' (parhypostasis), evil in bodies is unavoidable, resulting from a wide network of cosmic corporeal interactions that no partial being can ever have control of. Psychic evil, on the other hand, is a product of human choice and is independent of external circumstances, depending wholly on the soul's ability to keep its proper vertical hierarchy. In this regard it is evil in a much more serious sense of the word, being actively caused (though unintentionally) rather than just passively suffered. In the last section of my paper I throw further light on this more dangerous kind of evil, showing it as resulting from an essential bi-dimensionality of human beings.

Putnamian Constraints on Pluralistic Theology of Religions

There are many arguments that so-called pluralistic theologies of religions face difficulties in being sufficiently pluralistic. In order to meet such an objection, a pluralist offers different solutions. I argue that the range of plausible possibilities for a pluralist is strongly constrained by philosophical arguments which one can develop out of the philosophy of Hilary Putnam. In the first part of this paper, I sketch out three important strands of the Putnamian thought I consider worth defending. Given such presuppositions, I formulate two constraints on pluralistic theology of religions. In the last section of my paper, I briefly point out which of the particular standpoints, often labelled as “pluralistic theology of religions,” have problems with meeting formulated constraints, and which of the “pluralists” seem to be in accordance with them.

Haybron on Mood Propensity and Happiness

Daniel Haybron has made an original contribution to philosophical discussions of happiness. He has put forward a theory that identifies happiness with moods and the propensity to experience moods. Haybron’s contribution deserves a critical examination. The first section of my paper is interpretive. I show how Haybron uses the concepts of ‘central affective states’ and ‘mood propensity’ to define happiness. The second and third sections of the paper are critical. They focus on the inclusion of mood propensity in Haybron’s theory. In the second section I argue that his theory fails because there is an example that shows a subject can be happy even when that subject does not have a positive mood propensity. In the third section of the paper, I consider Haybron’s objection that the case in question is ‘object-specific’ and that it is not ‘emotionally-based’. I discuss both of these technical terms in detail. Moreover, I argue that a modified version of the counter example accommodates these technical terms while retaining the persuasiveness of the original example.

Definition of ‘element’

In a recent paper I showed how basic chemical concepts can be defined at a macroscopic level (Nelson, 2003). However, a personal correspondent, Dr. Daniel K.C. Tan, has pointed out that my definition of ‘element’ does not take proper account of the phenomenon of allotropy. I have accordingly revised the section of my paper on elements and compounds as set out below.

The Functionality of Christian Life: Problems of The Early Hegel's Epistemology of Religion

In this paper I want to explore a central line of reasoning in Hegel's early philosophy of religion, which he expounded in fragments he wrote while he was in Bern and Frankfurt in the 1790's. These fragments are known under the titles, Fragmente über Volksreligion und Christentum (dated around 1793–94), Die Positivität der christlichen Religion (1795–96), Entwürfe über Religion und Liebe, and a later essay entitled Der Geist des Christentums und sein Schicksat, they were written sometime between 1798 and 1800, a few years before Hegel published his seminal Jena texts, but they remained unpublished in his lifetime. These texts have, since Nohl's edition of 1907, come to be known collectively as Hegel's ‘theologische Jugendschriften’. I believe that they contain the inchoate system of Hegel's thought in general and his mature philosophy of religion in particular. My main claim here is that Hegel believes that there is an intimate relation between reason and religion, so much so in fact that one can argue that there is reason in religion.In the first section of my paper, I elaborate on some general problems concerning the relation between faith and reason, in particular, concerning the criterion of truth and viewpoint-neutrality. In the second section, I introduce Hegel's well-known problematic of the sublation of conceptual oppositions, which in the context of an account of the positivity of religion he already articulates, in some form, in these early documents and which may provide a solution for the problems that, in the first section, I argue arise around the relation between faith and reason. This will be merely a rough outline. I subsequently discuss, very briefly, some central aspects of Kant's philosophy of religion, to which to an important extent Hegel's is indebted. In the fourth section, I go on to indicate, also very broadly, the sense in which Hegel attempts to improve upon Kant and thus apparently proves to be more consistent than him. I then raise an issue concerning Hegel's particularist position in his epistemology of religion, which does not sit well with the notion of rationality as viewpoint-neutral. To illustrate this, I look at Hegel's reading of the Eucharist. This is all very sketchy and is meant mainly to elucidate the sense in which, according to Hegel, there is reason in religion.

Max Weber on Nations and Nationalsim: Political Economy before Political Sociology

Abstract: Although Weber voiced doubts about the scientific value of the concepts of and in his work one can detect the outlines of two theories of nation. In the political-sociological theory (exposed in Economy and Society), the is understood as a status group united by common historical memory and fighting for the prestige of power and culture with other nations. Besides that, in his early work Weber outlines the political-economical (or national-economical) theory of nation, conceiving as the organizational form of economic association which is optimal in the fight for elbow-room in the globalized Malthusian world as described by the classical model of long-term economic dynamics. Weberian political-economical concept of nations and nationalism is explicated using recent idea of rent-seeking, and is applied to highlight the deficiencies of the prevailing E.Gellner-E.Hobsbawm-B.Anderson theory of nations and nationalism. Resume: Bien que Weber ait des hesitations concernant la valeur scientifique des notions de la nation et l'ethnicite c'est possible distinguer les esquisses des deux theories de la dons ses travaux. La theorie politique-sociologique (en Economie et societe) define la comme une groupe de statut uni par la memoire historique commune, qui se battre contre les autres nations pour prestige de pouvoir et culture. Dons ses travaux premiers Weber profile aussi la theorie politique-economique (ou national-economique) de la nation. Ici la est conceptualisee comme une formed' organisation de association economique, qui est optimale pour la pour l'espace vitale dans le monde scion Malthus (comme il c'est decrit dons medele classique de la dynamique economique d'une longue duree) globalisee. La conception weberienne politique-economique des nations et nationalisme est reconstruite an utilisant la notion contemporaine des lutte pour des rentes (rent-seeking). Cette conception est aussi utilise pour exposer les defauts de in theorie de la et nationalisme de E.Gellner-E. Hobsbawm-B.Anderson, qui prevaut jusqu' a present. Introduction In one of his essays comparing the theoretical views of Max Weber and Ernest Gellner, Perry Anderson noted: Whereas Weber was so bewitched by the of nationalism that he was never able to theorize it, Gellner has theorized nationalism without detecting the spell (Anderson, P. 1992: 205). Anderson wants to say that Gellner's theory of nationalism (Gellner 1983, Gellner 1994) cannot explain the attractiveness of the ideas of nationalism. About Weber, Perry Anderson claims that although the famous German sociologist in his political views was an ardent German nationalist, he had no well-considered concept of nations and nationalism, and unreflectively adopted the dominant ideology in Wilhelmine Germany. In my paper, drawing on Weber's early writings (some of them became more accessible only after their reprint in his Gesamtausgabe), I try to reconstruct Weber's early political-economic (or national-economic) concept of nation. This is done in the second section of my paper. The first section discusses the later and more widely known political-sociological concept of nation, which is documented by Economy and Society, and the publications during the First World War. In the fourth and concluding section, I will try to evaluate both of Weber's concepts of from the viewpoint of the contemporary discussion about nations and nationalism. Most importantly, I will attempt to show here how Weber's early political-economic concept of nations and nationalism can be useful for the revival of the political-economic concept of nationhood which has unfortunately been eclipsed in current discussions. But firstly, I must explain how my contribution is related to the existing body of literature on Weber's notions about nations and nationalism. One of the reasons why Perry Anderson and other authors writing about the irrationalism and arbitrariness of Weber's nationalism (1) do not find the conceptual foundations of his political choice, is that in their searches they restrict themselves to the quite fragmentary chapters of Weber's Economy and Society devoted to ethnicity and nations, written between 1910 and 1914, and not prepared by Weber himself for publication. …

A Rejoinder to Robert Dahl

Exchanges of this sort typically consist of each side claiming the other has misunderstood its own position. Keeping to this tradition, I will begin by arguing that Professor Dahl has misconstrued my critique of his proof. But toward the end I will do something different and suggest another argument advocates of workplace democracy could pursue that avoids the pitfalls of the parallel case.In his reply Professor Dahl ascribes to me a libertarian position which I explicitly reject. He says that I view consent to authoritarian rule at work as a freely made choice involving absolutely no coercion. But, Professor Dahl counters, this assumption is obviously false for most workers in our economy, who find themselves in a weak bargaining position for want of capital or valuable skills. They are not in a position to negotiate political equality at work, and so we cannot interpret their submission to employers as a valid act of consent. In my terminology, their subjection option is hollow and thus irrelevant to the parallel case upon which the proof rests. As Professor Dahl sees it, I am a kind of uncompassionate conservative, enjoying a privileged occupational life but unconcerned about the plight of those less fortunate than myself.But Professor Dahl can only arrive at this conclusion by ignoring the fourth section of my paper, on the exploitation objection. There I go even farther than he does in granting the hollowness of the subjection option.

Three Models of Fiction: The Logical, the Phenomenological, and the Anthropological (Searle, Ingarden, Gans)

This essay is an attempt to bring together as sharply as possible three otherwise disparate approaches to the theory of fiction. By fiction I mean simply the use of language to designate objects or states of affairs that do not or need not exist in the real world. fictional sign is unverifiable in the pragmatic sense that it is not intended to lead us beyond its own performance to an extralinguistic reality, but instead insists on its separation from the worldly referent. This schematic definition is useful insofar as it goes, but the real work comes in articulating a theory that seeks to account for what is after all a peculiar kind of language-use, one furthermore that appears to be wholly specific to human beings. purpose of this essay is to examine three major modern philosophical approaches to this ques tion. I call these approaches the logical, the phenomenological, and the anthropological. Despite the generality of each theory, the origin for my remarks on them is quite specific. I begin by referring to a particular problem in the logical theory of fiction: the problem of reference. In his essay The Logical Status of Fiction,1 John Searle poses the question in terms of a paradox: How is it that fictional sentences can mean without referring? Why is it that we value and respond to a form of discourse that is nothing but pretense? No doubt to the professional literary critic, whose very career is defined by the hermeneutic principle that meaning is ulti mately illimitable and thus not reducible to any normalizing ontology, the fact that such a question should be granted serious consideration is evidence, not of philosophical profundity, but of an extreme intellectual na?vet?. But Searle's paradox is anything but trivial. It therefore seems wiser to suspend judgment and endeavor to understand the source of Searle's problematic by examining the assumptions from which it is made.2 This is the point of the first section of my paper, which is an attempt to outline the speech-act model of fiction. Byway of a convenient

On Listening To Music

My aim in this paper is an exceedingly modest one: to throw some light on listening to music. To do this I make use of some of Kant's ideas, which are drawn from the Critique of Pure Reason1 in the first two sections of my paper, and a few of T.S. Eliot's ideas, which are drawn primarily from his essay, "The Music of Poetry,"2 in the third and final section of my paper. I should make clear that I am not so much interpreting Kant and Eliot as I am borrowing from them and making use of their ideas in ways that they, no doubt, did not intend. It just happens to be true that their ideas are suggestive and, as I believe, fruitful for a consideration of music or so I will argue. Since the topic of my paper is listening, my argument in some measure takes cognizance of the position developed by Peter Kivy, whose work I consider to represent the state-of-the-art in musical aesthetics today, at least as far as listening is concerned. While I do not discuss Kivy's position in detail in what follows,3 my thinking on this subject has been stimulated by his recent book, Music Alone,4 and I would therefore like to acknowledge this general fact from the start. I only hope to have advanced the discussion begun there one step further down a very long road.

On Listening to Music

My aim in this paper is an exceedingly modest one: to throw some light on listening to music. To do this I make use of some of Kant's ideas, which are drawn from the Critique of Pure Reason1 in the first two sections of my paper, and a few of T.S. Eliot's ideas, which are drawn primarily from his essay, The Music of Poetry,2 in the third and final section of my paper. I should make clear that I am not so much interpreting Kant and Eliot as I am borrowing from them and making use of their ideas in ways that they, no doubt, did not intend. It just happens to be true that their ideas are suggestive and, as I believe, fruitful for a consideration of music or so I will argue. Since the topic of my paper is listening, my argument in some measure takes cognizance of the position developed by Peter Kivy, whose work I consider to represent the state-of-the-art in musical aesthetics today, at least as far as listening is concerned. While I do not discuss Kivy's position in detail in what follows,3 my thinking on this subject has been stimulated by his recent book, Music Alone,4 and I would therefore like to acknowledge this general fact from the start. I only hope to have advanced the discussion begun there one step further down a very long road.

Discourse Ethics: Moral Theory or Political Ethic?

Jiirgen Habermas has described his conception of discourse ethics as a moral theory that can aid the understanding of social, legal, and political developments. This paper will examine contrasting visions of the status of discourse ethics concerning its relation to morality, law, and politics. I shall begin with a brief sketch of Habermas's understanding of the relationship between morality, law, and politics followed by a close examination of Habermas's philosophical justification for discourse ethics as set out in his essay entitled Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification, and elaborated upon in Erliuterungen zur Diskursethik.1 The second section of my paper will engage three critiques leveled by sympathetic critics which converge upon Habermas's crucial distinction between the good and the just. Jean Cohen critiques Habermas for blurring this distinction, questioning the appropriateness of discourse ethics as a moral theory, rather than simply a theory of sociopolitical norm legitimation. Seyla Benhabib and Agnes Heller both

Opera talk: A philosophical ‘phantasie’

The train of thought that I wish to pursue here was initiated by Edward T. Cone's recent essay ‘The World of Opera and its Inhabitants’. To the extent that my views diverge from his I suppose I may be taken for a critical adversary. But I prefer to think of the present effort as more a continuation and development of Professor Cone's ideas than an attempt to refute or criticise them. It is in the spirit of ongoing research rather than the more common one, in my profession, of philosophical confrontation that I offer remarks on the general questions, as posed by Cone: ‘How does the world of opera differ from other dramatic worlds? Who are the people that inhabit it, and what sorts of lives do they lead there?’ More particularly, my question is: What is the nature of operatic utterance? How are operatic characters ‘saying’?In the first section of my paper I will present Professor Cone's answers to these questions. In the second I will go on what will appear, no doubt, to be a completely tangential excursion into R. G. Collingwood's philosophy of art. But in the final two sections I will try to weave these two seemingly disparate strands together into an answer of my own to the questions that Professor Cone has so insightfully raised. Perhaps ‘an answer of my own’ is too strong a phrase to use, implying something more like disagreement than is actually the case. So a better way of describing my whole enterprise, and the final sections especially, is ‘variations on a theme by Cone’.

The Problem of Knowledge and Phenomenology

My main purpose in this paper is to state my own positon with respect to what is commonly called the problem of knowledge. I do so, however, in discussion with the phenomenological tradition. Consequently, the second section of my paper is devoted to a lengthy statement and criticism of Husserl's theory of knowledge. And in the footnotes I indicate my critical views of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty.

The PICA revisited

A little over ten years ago, I wrote a critique of the Porch Index of Communicative Ability (Martin 1977). My purpose was two-fold: first, I wanted to raise objections to use of the test itself since I believe it to be seriously flawed conceptually and therefore of limited, if any, clinical or research use; second, I hoped to stimulate discussion of the entire issue of testing in aphasia. Unfortunately, because of space concerns, a key section of my paper was edited (with my permission I must hasten to add) and the focus of the paper became more of an attack on the PICA than a discussion trigger as I had hoped. While my first purpose was achieved, there has been little discussion of what I still think to be the important issues raised in the paper. Dr Lincoln’s thoughtful piece, ‘Using the PICA in clinical practice: are we flogging a dead horse?’ raises many of these issues. I should say at the start that except for minor reservations of emphasis and priority, I have objections to only two comments she makes in her paper, those on the use of the PICA to monitor recovery and the desirability of a multidimensional scoring system. I hope therefore, I will be excused for discussing from my own points of reference, some of the same points she makes so well.

Can Black Studies and Sociology Find Common Ground?

I have been asked to consider the relationships between black studies and sociology. By now, surely, we have arrived at the point where we can engage in candid, albeit not always calm, appraisals of black studies-sociology conflict as it has developed during the years since 1966 and 1967. By now, surely, we ought to be able to anticipate some of the prospects and problems in the period immediately ahead and to suggest some of the means whereby they may be dealt with. Black studies, in one form or another, is here to stay. Indeed, few colleges or universities would consider themselves au courant unless they offered such a program and planned to expand it to include other ethnic minorities. The crucial questions, then, are not those of survival, but of the shape and quality of black studies programs in the future, and, here, their relationship to sociology at both the intellectual and institutional levels. In the final section of my paper, I shall suggest some tentative answers to the question: Can black studies and sociology find some common ground? During the last five years literally hundreds of black studies programs have been established on college and university campuses across the land. No precise figure is available, but surveys conducted in 1971 and 1972 suggest that approximately twothirds of four-year colleges which are predominantly white have some type of black studies program. The same sources indicate that nine-tenths of the predominantly black colleges have such programs.1 Needless to say, the development of black studies has

The Need for a Reorientation of Secondary Mathematics from the College Viewpoint

In discussing the orientation of secondary mathematics, I shall not consider explicit details about the content of high school courses or about the methodology of their teachers. Moreover, although I shall be speaking from the viewpoint of a teacher of college mathematics, I shall not restrict myself to topics which are of importance only as preparation for college work. Part of my remarks will relate to the matter of teacher morale, and will suggest inferences with respect to the mathematical attitude of those responsible for the administration of the high schools. Another section of my paper will consist of general recommendations about the placement of students in courses in secondary mathematics.