For humans, Artificial Intelligence operates more like a Rorschach test, as it is expected that intelligent machines will reflect humans' cognitive and physical behaviours. The concept of intelligence, however, is often confused with consciousness, and it is believed that the progress of intelligent machines will eventually result in them becoming conscious in the future. Nevertheless, what is overlooked is how the exploration of Artificial Intelligence also pertains to the development of human consciousness. An excellent example of this can be seen (...) in the film Being John Malkovich (1999). In the film, different characters have their perceptions altered as a result of hacking into the mind of John Malkovich, which produces sensations that may have remained hidden to their consciousness due to their dis-abilities. This article engages with the research question: Can the symbiotic relationship between humans and machines trigger an artificial consciousness for humans? An artificially created consciousness is the premise that a machine can generate knowledge about an individual that is not already present in the person. For the same purpose, the article takes the cinematic text Being John Malkovich by Spike Jonze for exploring concepts such as human/robot rights, virtual sex, virtual rape, and bodily disability, which are essential topics in the midst of increasing human- Artificial Intelligence interaction. The purpose of this article is to contribute towards the creation of a better understanding of Artificial Intelligence, particularly from the perspective of film studies and philosophy, by highlighting the potential of Artificial Intelligence as a vessel for exploring human consciousness. (shrink)

The Médecins Sans Frontières ethics review board has been solicited in an unprecedented way to provide advice and review research protocols in an ‘emergency’ mode during the recent Ebola epidemic. Twenty-seven Ebola-related study protocols were reviewed between March 2014 and August 2015, ranging from epidemiological research, to behavioural research, infectivity studies and clinical trials with investigational products at early development stages. This article examines the MSF ERB’s experience addressing issues related to both the process of review and substantive ethical issues (...) in this context. These topics include lack of policies regarding blood sample collection and use, and engaging communities regarding their storage and future use; exclusion of pregnant women from clinical and vaccine trials; and the difficulty of implementing timely and high-quality qualitative/anthropological research to consider potential upfront harms. Having noticed different standards across ethics committees, we propose that when multiple ethics reviews of clinical and vaccine trials are carried out during a public health emergency they should be accompanied by transparent communication between the ECs involved. The MSF ERB experience should trigger a broader discussion on the ‘optimal’ ethics review in an emergency outbreak and what enduring structural changes are needed to improve the ethics review process. (shrink)

Over recent years, the research community has been increasingly using preprint servers to share manuscripts that are not yet peer-reviewed. Even if it enables quick dissemination of research findings, this practice raises several challenges in publication ethics and integrity. In particular, preprints have become an important source of information for stakeholders interested in COVID19 research developments, including traditional media, social media, and policy makers. Despite caveats about their nature, many users can still confuse pre-prints with peer-reviewed manuscripts. If unconfirmed but (...) already widely shared first-draft results later prove wrong or misinterpreted, it can be very difficult to “unlearn” what we thought was true. Complexity further increases if unconfirmed findings have been used to inform guidelines. To help achieve a balance between early access to research findings and its negative consequences, we formulated five recommendations: (a) consensus should be sought on a term clearer than ‘pre-print’, such as ‘Unrefereed manuscript’, “Manuscript awaiting peer review” or ‘’Non-reviewed manuscript”; (b) Caveats about unrefereed manuscripts should be prominent on their first page, and each page should include a red watermark stating ‘Caution—Not Peer Reviewed’; (c) pre-print authors should certify that their manuscript will be submitted to a peer-review journal, and should regularly update the manuscript status; (d) high level consultations should be convened, to formulate clear principles and policies for the publication and dissemination of non-peer reviewed research results; (e) in the longer term, an international initiative to certify servers that comply with good practices could be envisaged. (shrink)

Médecins Sans Frontières is one of the world’s leading humanitarian medical organizations. The increased emphasis in MSF on research led to the creation of an ethics review board in 2001. The ERB has encouraged innovation in the review of proposals and the interaction between the ERB and the organization. This has led to some of the advances in ethics governance described in this paper.

This paper investigates the effect of female representation on the board of directors on corporate response to stakeholders’ demands for increased public reporting about climate change-related risks. We rely on the Carbon Disclosure Project as a sustainability initiative supported by institutional investors. Greenhouse gas emissions measurement and its disclosure to investors can be thought of as a first step toward addressing climate change issues and reducing the firm’s carbon footprint. Based on a sample of publicly listed Canadian firms over the (...) period 2008–2014, we find that the likelihood of voluntary climate change disclosure increases with women percentage on boards. We also find evidence that supports critical mass theory with regard to board gender diversity. These findings reinforce initiatives being undertaken around the world to promote gender diversity in corporate governance while demonstrating board effectiveness in stakeholder management. (shrink)

Metaethical constitutivists seek to ground normativity in facts about what is constitutive of agency. One strand of constitutivism locates the foundations of normativity in constitutive aims, which are standardly conceived of in teleological terms. I present three challenges that show that the teleological conception of constitutive aims is inadequate for the constitutivist project. I then sketch an alternative conception of constitutive aims in the form of a commitment-based conception. On the commitment-based conception, actions and attitudes constitutively represent their objects as (...) having certain properties, and their constitutive aims are fixed by the accuracy-conditions of these representations. Because such representations constitutively involve a commitment on the part of the agent to the object’s having the relevant property, they generate authoritative norms for the agent. I conclude that, unlike the teleological conception, the commitment-based conception promises to yield a unified constitutivism that delivers authoritative normative standards for both actions and attitudes. (shrink)

La literatura nacida en ámbito monástico o asociada al mismo, ofrece aspectos ponderables sobre la antropología teológica. Señalaremos algunos conceptos al respecto, sobre todo a partir de la memoria y la construcción de la propia identidad. El Himno de la Perla se caracteriza por haber sido objeto de disímiles interpretaciones, siendo considerado desde un texto iranio a una composición gnóstica. Presentaremos una lectura narrativa, tomando como categorías de aproximación el recuerdo y el olvido, a partir de las cuales plantearemos un (...) posible vínculo entre el Himno de la Perla y el Pseudo-Macario. Quispel, ya en 1967, estableció un parentesco de Teología (Verwandschaft der Teologie), destacando que también se encuentran paralelismos de forma. Tomando en cuenta este notable aporte, procuraremos indagar en la literatura pseudo-macariana acerca de tales parentescos con el Himno de la Perla y la literatura sobre el apóstol Tomás. (shrink)

Year after year, our exposure to the Gita remains limited to these fleeting visual engagements as they become part of our muscle memory as we go about our chores.

Si le tragique n'est pas le propre de la tragédie grecque mais bien celui de 'l'être au monde de l'homme', sa conceptualisation n'advient qu'avec Wilderlin lorsque celui-ci s'approprie la question 'Comment lit-on la tragédie?', non plus selon son acception poétique, mais en tant que forme philosophique. Et si l'on suit sa réflexion, à la question 'Qu'est-ce que le tragique?', on notera qu'il est une façon d'être au monde de manière spéculative. L'union des contraires, de la poésie et de la sagesse, (...) voilà ce qui a tant plu à Empédocle, Hölderlin et Nietzsche. Si Je est un autre, la pensée tragique représente l'individu conscient de lui-même dans sa totalité. Mais, un personnage tragique n'est-il pas destiné à exister dans l'Histoire? Pour ces trois poètes, il s'agissait de traduire le monde du symbole, de la parabole, ou de l'allégorie en une nouvelle langue. En relisant de cette manière le tragique du monde, se découvre un sens qu'Empédocle, Hölderlin ou Nietzsche illuminèrent de leur regard: la mort dans les esquisses d'une tragédie pour Hölderlin et Nietzsche, ou la chute du démon chez Empédocle, traduisent la relation des oppositions dans l'absolu de la disparition"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Essays on Sikh philosophy, ethos and politics ; previously published in Panjabi newspapers and magazines.

ABSTRACT Banks provide a valuable but inherently unstable combination of deposit‐taking and lending functions that were successfully held together for several decades after the New Deal by tough banking rules. The weakening of the rules after the 1970s promoted the displacement of traditional relationship‐based banking with securitized, arms‐length alternatives that encouraged banks to undertake activities about which bankers lacked deep relationship‐based knowledge of the risks. Ironically, this risky behavior, encouraged by loosened regulation, was reinforced by progressively tightened securities regulation, which (...) promoted stock‐market liquidity but also deprived large banks (and other publicly traded companies) of oversight by investors with “insiders’” knowledge. Both the underregulation of banking and the overregulation of securities were underpinned by economic theories that favored blind diversification in liquid, anonymous markets, and that ignored the value of relationship‐based knowledge and case‐by‐case due diligence. (shrink)

In this commentary, I raise a few questions about Schmidt’s argument against (R-E): whether facts about incoherence are directly reasons for suspension on particular propositions, as opposed to reasons against sets of attitudes; whether (R-E) should really be formulated in terms of a broad category of “doxastic attitudes” that includes transitional attitudes like suspension; and whether incoherence-based reasons really must fit into the category of “epistemic reasons,” as opposed to be a more general category of right-kind reasons. Though my questions (...) reflect some skepticism about the specifics of Schmidt’s argument, I conclude that it succeeds in what I take to be its broader aim. (shrink)

Our concern in this paper lies with a common argument from racial discrimination to realism about races: some people are discriminated against for being members of a particular race (i.e., racial discrimination exists), so some people must be members of that race (i.e., races exist). Error theorists have long responded that we can explain racial discrimination in terms of racial attitudes alone, so we need not explain it in terms of race itself. But to date there has been little detailed (...) discussion of whether it is better to explain racial discrimination in terms of race or in terms of racial attitudes alone. Our goal is to offer a novel and detailed argument in defense of explaining racial discrimination in terms of racial attitudes alone, by attending to the neglected phenomenon of misperception discrimination, which involves differential treatment due to misperceived race. We argue that the discriminatory action in misperception cases must be explained in the same way as cases where (according to the realist) the victim’s race is accurately perceived. Thus, the victim’s actual race cannot provide the best explanation. The main upshot of our argument is that explanatory arguments from racial discrimination to realism about race fail. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In his ‘Rationality versus Normativity’, John Broome argues against the view that rationality is reducible to normativity. Broome’s argument rests on the claim that while rationality supervenes on the mind, normativity does not. In this commentary, I argue that Broome's arguments succeed only against views on which reasons and normativity are univocal. Once we admit of multiple kinds of normative reasons, some fact-given and others non-factive, a version of the reasons-responsiveness view emerges that is untouched by Broome's arguments. On (...) such a view, rationality supervenes on non-factive reasons, not on fact-given ones, so rationality supervenes on a kind of normativity that supervenes on the mind. This shows that Broome has not refuted reasons-responsiveness views wholesale. Moreover, because Broome’s arguments do refute univocal versions of reasons-responsiveness views, they provide a justification for preferring non-univocal versions of reasons-responsiveness views to univocal ones. (shrink)

Recently, the second author, Briseid, and Safarik introduced nonstandard Dialectica, a functional interpretation capable of eliminating instances of familiar principles of nonstandard arithmetic—including overspill, underspill, and generalizations to higher types—from proofs. We show that the properties of this interpretation are mirrored by first-order logic in a constructive sheaf model of nonstandard arithmetic due to Moerdijk, later developed by Palmgren, and draw some new connections between nonstandard principles and principles that are rejected by strict constructivism. Furthermore, we introduce a variant of (...) the Diller–Nahm interpretation with two different kinds of quantifiers, similar to Hernest’s light Dialectica interpretation, and show that one can obtain nonstandard Dialectica by weakening the computational content of the existential quantifiers—a process called herbrandization. We also define a constructive sheaf model mirroring this new functional interpretation, and show that the process of herbrandization has a clear meaning in terms of these sheaf models. (shrink)

Lord Rabinder Singh has been one of the leading lights in the recent development of the common law, most notably in the field of human rights and the law of privacy. Here, for the first time, he reflects on the defining themes of his career as advocate and judge. Combining his trademark originality of thought and impeccable scholarship, he selects previously published and unpublished writings to track the evolution of his approach to the common law. A substantial introduction gives (...) context to the book, while opening introductions to each piece reflect on their relevance to contemporary legal thought. The essays explore themes as diverse as judicial review, equality, and privacy and personal autonomy. Insightful, erudite, and thought-provoking, this collection is a must read for all those interested in the law and its role in society. (shrink)

This article examines the idioms of ‘modernity’ with specific focus on indigenous peoples and their engagement with larger society in respect of culture, development and jurisprudence. This engagement in the past 50 years has largely been within the terms of the nation-state system, and related international fora. It is argued that these indigeneous communities, in all their great diversity across the world, have nevertheless been largely successful in carving out adequate political spaces to stake their claims as distinct ‘peoples’ rather (...) than simply being recognized as one among the several ethnic groups or minorities of a nation-state polity. This distinction is crucial and this paper shows why and how. This is not to say that the indigenous communities the world over have similar terms of engagement as their own heterogeneity defies any neat typological schema. At the same time, the multiple idioms of the current indigenous discourse, however, should not be treated as cacophonic but as embodying consciously crafted tools for boundary negotiations and voicing indigenous identities. This article reflects on this achievement by providing a survey of these developments even as it critically explores the terms of the discourses themselves. (shrink)

Multidimensional practical demand has made Islamology one of the most "trendy" branches of Oriental studies and has created a host of serious difficulties and problems associated with an adequate scientific response to the "Islamic challenge". Excessive politicization of the study of such a phenomenon as Islamic fundamentalism, radicalism in the world, undoubtedly, undermines the true scientific knowledge, preventing the specialists from understanding this complex phenomenon.

The Present Book Contains The Philosophy Of Organism Associated With The Teachings Of Prof. An Whitehead With Comparative Reference To Indian Philosophical Doctrines And Chinese Philosophy Of Change. In Part I The Author Deals With Sage Philosopher'S Conc.

The Present Book Contains The Philosophy Of Organism Associated With The Teachings Of Prof. An Whitehead With Comparative Reference To Indian Philosophical Doctrines And Chinese Philosophy Of Change. In Part I The Author Deals With Sage Philosopher'S Conc.

Evaluative Conditioning (EC) refers to changes in our liking or disliking of a stimulus due to its pairing with other positive or negative stimuli. In addition to stimulus-based mechanisms, recent research has shown that action-based mechanisms can also lead to EC effects. Research, based on action control theories, has shown that pairing a positive or negative action with a neutral stimulus results in EC effects (Stimulus-Response binding). Similarly, research studies using Operant Conditioning (OC) approaches have also observed EC effects. The (...) aim of the present study is to directly compare EC effects elicited by two different response-based approaches – S-R bindings and OC. To this end, participants were randomly assigned to an S-R binding procedure and an OC procedure. EC effects were measured in conditions and compared. Implications for EC theory are discussed. (shrink)

... Introduction to Buddhist Tantra Tantra forms the esoteric basis of all major religions. It stands for the awakening of dormant divinity. It is a mystic technique to invoke the spirituality of man and woman.

This Reader provides a comprehensive introduction to the study of contemporary Indian political theory. Tracing the development of the discipline and offering a clear presentation of the most influential literature in the field, it brings together contributions by outstanding and well-known academics on contemporary Indian political thought. The Reader weaves together relevant works from the social sciences — sociology, anthropology, law, history, philosophy, feminist and postcolonial theory — which shape the nature of political thought in India today. Themes both unique (...) to the Indian political milieu as well as of universal significance are reflected upon, including tradition, secularism, communalism, modernity, feminism, justice and human rights. Presenting a canon of names and offering a framework for further research within the broad thematic categories, this is a timely and invaluable reference tool, indispensable to both students and scholars. (shrink)

Contributed articles with reference to India.

Intensely loyal, practical, straightforward, almost fearless, with a wry sense of humor, Amos is also analytical, a quick thinker, and exceedingly aware of his surroundings. Amos wasn't always fond of Holden. After spending tough and adventurous times together, Amos changes his attitude toward Holden and regards him as a good person. Amos embodies Friedrich Nietzsche's famous slogan, “live dangerously!” Nietzsche traced the beginning of slave morality to a creative reversal of values fueled by ressentiment. According to Nietzsche, our fundamental drive (...) is the desire to gain and express power. Looking at Amos through a Nietzschean lens makes us reluctant to judge the character as good or evil. Amos has not channeled or sublimated his will to power. He has not overcome himself and humanity. Ultimately, he is far from becoming Nietzsche's ideal figure, the Ubermensch. (shrink)