The Conceptual Problems Arising from Legal Pluralism

This paper argues that analytical jurisprudence has been insufficiently attentive to three significant puzzles highlighted by the legal pluralist tradition: the existence of commonalities between different types of law, the possibility of a distinction between law and non-law, and the explanatory centrality of the state. I further argue that the resolution of these questions sets the stage for a renewed agenda of analytical jurisprudence and has to be considered in attempts for reconciliation between the academic traditions of analytical jurisprudence and legal pluralism, often called “pluralist jurisprudence.” I also argue that the resolution of these problems affects the empirical, doctrinal, and politico-moral inquiries about legal pluralism.

Alternative forms of judicial review

The invention in the late twentieth century of what I call weak-form systems of judicial review provides us with the chance to see in a new light some traditional debates within U.S. constitutional law and theory, which are predicated on the fact that the United States has strong-form judicial review. Strong- and weak-form systems operate on the level of constitutional design, in the sense that their characteristics are specified in constitutional documents or in deep-rooted constitutional traditions. After sketching the differences between strong- and weak-form systems, I turn to design features that operate at the next lower level. Here legislatures or courts specify whether their enactments or decisions will receive strong- or weak-form treatment. I examine examples of legislative allocations of issues to strong- and weak-form review and identify some practical and conceptual problems with such allocations. Then I examine judicial allocations — of the courts’ own decisions — to Strong- or weak-form categories. Here I consider Thayerian judicial review and what Professor Dan Coenen has called semisubstantive doctrines as examples of judicial choices to give their decisions weak-form effects. My conclusion is that these allocation strategies reproduce within strong- and weakform systems the issues that arise on the level of constitutional design. Weak-form systems and allocation may seem to alleviate some difficultiesassociated with strong-form systems in constitutional democracies. My analysis suggests that those difficulties may persist even when alternatives to strong-form judicial review are adopted.

The Tangut Text of Suiyuan ji and the History of Chan Buddhism in Xixia

The paper discusses some problems pertaining to the spread of Sinitic Buddhism, especially of the Huayan Chan tradition in Xixia. These include issues of the transmission of the teaching as well as codicological and conceptual problems of the dissemination of the publications of Huayan Chan texts in Xixia. The paper presents evidence that the Chan Buddhist content available to the Tanguts was not limited to Huayan Chan, but included some knowledge of the Song-period Chan Buddhism. The paper introduces the previously unknown Tangut composition Suiyuan ji and discusses its structure as well as aspects of its contents.

Identifying students’ difficulty in the basic of thermodynamics

Conceptual understanding is one of the main topics in physics educational research. It is important as the basic of other ability in education, such as argumentation, making scientific explanation and problem solving. This survey study aims to identify students’ difficulty to understand the basic of thermodynamics. There are 128 first year undergraduate students as the participants of the study. The data collection method is test. Result of the study shows that isobaric process of ideal gas and mechanical equilibrium state concepts are the most difficult concepts. Some difficulties are found in understanding the basic of thermodynamics: (1) because of the presence of higher cognitive load while solving conceptual problems, (2) when the question demands other ability, especially mathematical ability, to solve the conceptual problem, (3) because of students’ disability to integrate the knowledge. This study could be used to develop learning instruction or media in basic physics or introduction of thermodynamics course.

Penyelesaian Wanprestasi simpan Pinjam pada Koperasi danu Artha

Cooperatives as pillars of the national economy are not only expected to be equal to other economic actors, namely BUMN and private sectors but also have a greater role in running an economy characterized by democracy. Legal protection is all forms of efforts to protect human dignity and human rights in the field of law. Legal protection is all forms of efforts to protect human dignity and human rights in the field of law. APS is the designation given to the grouping of dispute resolution through the process of negotiation, mediation, conciliation, and expert rights. This study aimed to examine the legal protections for the parties in the event of a default in the Danu Artha Cooperative and reveal how to resolve the parties who enter into an agreement if there is a default in the Danu Artha Cooperative. This study was designed using empirical research with a sociological approach, regulations, conceptual problems, and cases. The data sources used were primary and secondary data. The results of the study revealed that legal protection in the agreement in cooperatives is important and is the basis for cooperatives in running the cooperative business, and dispute resolution against parties who default is carried out through non-litigation and litigation channels. The non-litigation route did not find a common ground so that the dispute was brought and resolved at the State Receivables and Auctions Agency.

Virtual affective consciousness and raw social AI

In this paper, we attempt to philosophically eliminate the conceptual problems in develop-ing affective artificial agents, and then put forward an industry and research direction called Raw Social AI. We first provide a set of laws for affective concepts understanding, and then suggest that we should build unconscious concepts with uncertainty. We address the problem of qualia supply, and discuss how to implement the initiative of affective agents. We suggest that initiative be the cue of utility of affective agents. We advocate that the initiative of affective agents must be realized as social services. Raw social AI is about using AI to record, model and predict people's emotional reactions in the real or virtual world. It is necessary for us to establish the infrastructure of raw social AI.

When scale is surplus

We study a long-recognised but under-appreciated symmetry called dynamical similarity and illustrate its relevance to many important conceptual problems in fundamental physics. Dynamical similarities are general transformations of a system where the unit of Hamilton’s principal function is rescaled, and therefore represent a kind of dynamical scaling symmetry with formal properties that differ from many standard symmetries. To study this symmetry, we develop a general framework for symmetries that distinguishes the observable and surplus structures of a theory by using the minimal freely specifiable initial data for the theory that is necessary to achieve empirical adequacy. This framework is then applied to well-studied examples including Galilean invariance and the symmetries of the Kepler problem. We find that our framework gives a precise dynamical criterion for identifying the observables of those systems, and that those observables agree with epistemic expectations. We then apply our framework to dynamical similarity. First we give a general definition of dynamical similarity. Then we show, with the help of some previous results, how the dynamics of our observables leads to singularity resolution and the emergence of an arrow of time in cosmology.

From Engel to Enactivism

In this article we offer a two-part commentary on Bolton and Gillett’s reconceptualization of Engel’s biopsychosocial model. In the first section we present a conceptual and historical assessment of the biopsychosocial model that differs from the analysis by Bolton and Gillett. Specifically, we point out that Engel in his vision of the biopsychosocial model was less concerned with the ontological possibility and nature of psychosocial causes, and more concerned with psychosocial influences in the form of illness interpretation and presentation, sick role, seeking or rejection of care, the doctor-patient therapeutic relationship, and role of personality factors and family relationships in recovery from illness, etc. On the basis of this assessment, we then question Bolton and Gillett’s restricted focus on accounting for biopsychosocial causal interactions. The second section compares Bolton and Gillett’s account with a recent enactivist account of mental disorder that tackles similar conceptual problems of causal interactions. Bolton and Gillett’s utilize elements of the 4E cognition, but they combine these proto-ideas with an information-processing paradigm. Given their explicit endorsement of 4E approaches to mind and cognition, we illustrate some key ways in which a more fleshed out enactive account, particularly one that doesn’t rely on notions of information-processing, differs from the account proposed by Bolton and Gillett.

Kurdish liberty

Most politically minded Kurds agree that their people need liberty. Moreover, they agree they need liberation from the domination they suffer from the four states that divide them: Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. What is less certain is the precise nature of this liberty. A key debate that characterizes Kurdish political discourse is over whether the liberty they seek requires the existence of an independent Kurdish nation-state. Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed intellectual leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has argued that Kurdish liberty can only be achieved through liberation from the nation-state model itself. Instead of founding an independent Kurdistan, Öcalan proposes regional autonomy for the Kurds through a strictly egalitarian and directly democratic confederalism reminiscent of Murray Bookchin’s anarchist-inspired libertarian municipalism. We argue, in response to Öcalan’s approach, that employing an anarchist rejection of the state is largely mistaken. We diagnose certain historical and conceptual problems with the anarchist understanding of the state and develop the admission made in passing by certain anarchists, including Öcalan, that anarchist liberty could only be achieved after a long period of statist existence. Mostly counter to the anarchist model of non-domination, we propose a republican model of liberty and liberation, also as non-domination, that necessitates the formation of an independent state, at least in this historical period, for Kurds and hence any dominated people to count as truly free. We conclude by attempting to combine certain elements of the anarchist and republican conceptions and offer a synthetic communitarian view that could serve as a better foundation for Kurdish aspirations for liberty.