A Gricean Interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s Catuṣkoṭi and the No-Thesis View

Nāgārjuna (c. 150–250 CE), the famous founder of the Madhyamika School, proposed the positive gt;catu?ko?igt; in his seminal work, gt;Mūlamadhyamakakārikāgt;: ‘All is real, or all is unreal, all is both real and unreal, all is neither unreal nor real; this is the graded teaching of the Buddha’. He also proposed the negative gt;catu?ko?igt;: ‘“It is empty” is not to be said, nor “It is non-empty,” nor that it is both, nor that it is neither; [“empty”] is said only for the sake of instruction’ and the no-thesis view: ‘No gt;dharmagt; whatsoever was ever taught by the Buddha to anyone’. In this essay, I adopt Gricean pragmatics to explain the positive and negative gt;catu?ko?igt; and the no-thesis view proposed by Nāgārjuna in a way that does not violate classical logic. For Nāgārjuna, all statements are false as long as the hearer understands them within a reified conceptual scheme, according to which (a) substance is a basic categorical concept; (b) substances have gt;svabhāvagt;, and (c) names and sentences have gt;svabhāvagt;.     

The pay premium for high-potential women: A constructive replication and refinement

In this constructive replication, we revisit a provocative study by Leslie, Manchester, and Dahm (2017). They found that gender and being designated a high-potential employee interacted in accounting for pay and that this resulted in a reversal in the commonly observed gender pay gap favoring men. Our primary aim was to examine important boundary conditions associated with their work by (a) conducting a study using a sample that would better generalize across industries and to individuals who aspire to reach senior management, (b) adding critical control variables to the statistical models used in the pay equation, and (c) by introducing a different conceptualization of the high-potential construct. Also, to better understand the consequences of their study, we considered an additional dependent variable that addressed pay satisfaction. Even after making these model additions, the gender by high-potential interaction term was significant—ruling out four plausible third-variable explanations for the Leslie et al. finding. Moreover, these confirming results were observed using a sample that represented individuals employed in a wide range of industries, who had the educational backgrounds, career histories, and motivational states typically required of candidates competing for senior executive roles. Furthermore, high-potential women did not report higher levels of pay satisfaction, suggesting that high-potential women did not perceive their pay premium to be an inequitable advantage and that there may be limited positive return associated with using a pay premium to retain high-potential talent.     

Towards modern post-coma care based on neuroscientific evidence

gt;Backgroundgt;Understanding the mechanisms underlying human consciousness is pivotal to improve the prognostication and treatment of severely brain-injured patients. Consciousness remains an elusive concept and the identification of its neural correlates is an active subject of research, however recent neuroscientific advances have allowed scientists to better characterize disorders of consciousness. These breakthroughs question the historical nomenclature and our current management of post-comatose patients.gt;Methodgt;This review examines the contribution of consciousness neurosciences to the current clinical management of severe brain injury. It investigates the major impact of consciousness disorders on healthcare systems, the scientific frameworks employed to identify their neural correlates and how evidence-based data from neuroimaging research have reshaped the landscape of post-coma care in recent years.gt;Resultsgt;Our increased ability to detect behavioral and neurophysiological signatures of consciousness has led to significant changes in taxonomy and clinical practice. We advocate for a multimodal framework for the management of severely brain-injured patients based on precision medicine and evidence-based decisions, integrating epidemiology, health economics and neuroethics.gt;Conclusionsgt;Major progress in brain imaging and clinical assessment have opened the door to a new era of post-coma care based on standardized neuroscientific evidence. We highlight its implications in clinical applications and call for improved collaborations between researchers and clinicians to better translate findings to the bedside.