In this chapter, we begin by sketching in the broadest possible strokes the ideas behind two formal systems that have been introduced with to goal of explicating the ways in which reasons interact to support the actions and conclusions they do. The first of these is the theory of defeasible reasoning developed in the seminal work of Pollock; the second is a more recent theory due to Horty, which adapts and develops the default logic introduced by Reiter to provide an (...) account of reasons. However, the implementations are complex enough, in both cases, to prevent anything more than this sketch. And we would not want to give the impression that we think that work on the logic of reasons must follow the path mapped out in either of these theories—indeed, we feel that the field is wide open. In the remainder of the chapter, therefore, will concentrate on a number of issues bearing on the logic of reasons that are either not treated in the work of Pollock and Horty, or whose treatment there is, we feel, either inadequate or incomplete. These are: first, the question of whether it is necessary to understand logical interactions among reasons themselves, rather than simply between reasons and the actions or conclusions they support, and if so, what principles might govern these interactions; second, priority relations among reasons and the notion of reason accrual; and third, some problems posed by undercutting defeat. (shrink)

In This Book The Author Have Tried To Present A Historical Study Of Vedic Interpretation Confines Ourselves To The Study Of These Various Parts Of The Vedic Literature As Some Interpretation Of The Vedic Samhita. The Author Observed The Vedic Myth, Rituals And Philosophy As Interpreted By Madhvacarya The Founder Of Dvaita School Of Vedanta.

The didactic proposal of the post-constructivist (Grossi, 2005), takes into account the relationship between the subject, reality, others and the Other interior and considers the learning potential of all students. Its theoretical foundation is, among other things, the principle that learning is a social phenomenon, and that the spatial organization of the class, in groups of adults, promotes the teaching-learning process. Post-constructivism is a didactic proposition that allows us to respond to the purpose of teaching all students. This article on (...) group work in post-constructivism aims to analyze the change in posture of teachers, and the professional development that follows, and which demonstrates a break with the traditional form of education. The trick of the identified researcher is then to take up in a teacher training, through the aulic groups in the Geempa class and the weekly study group, the scientific approach of post-constructivism. (shrink)

Business ethics researchers and practitioners are interested in understanding the temporal mechanisms of various managerial activities, processes, and policies. In this direction, I borrow notions of time from Virginia Woolf’s _Mrs. Dalloway_ to examine how social time intersperses with the paid and (unpaid) care work of female employees during the pandemic. I explore how discussions of social time in connection to care work appear in newspaper discourses of “shecession”, i.e. the large-scale job/income losses experienced by women during the COVID-19 pandemic. (...) Since shecession is a byproduct of the pandemic times, exploring the role of time in it is crucial. In fact, my findings show that the macro social time of the pandemic affects working women with care responsibilities who are situated at the intersection of multiple vulnerable social categories by simultaneously being a penalizer and a lost opportunity. Similarly, I also find that the micro social times of working women embed, stratify, and synchronize differently during the pandemic when compared to normal times. Working women with care responsibilities are thus adversely affected by both micro and macro social time changes. My findings, therefore, could be instrumental in developing and implementing inclusive policies and processes in business organizations and labor markets. In so doing, my study also indicates how a consideration of social time enriches the application of care ethics in work contexts. Ultimately, this article is also about developing caring organizations, societies, and families which care for the caregivers (working women), since receiving care is a precondition of giving care. (shrink)

The book discusses citizenship in the contemporary world; as a concept, as an ideal, as a policy and as a goal to be achieved from the perspective of different academic disciplines.

Presents a wide offering of contemporary philosophical perspectives--including theoretical, historical, cross-cultural, and evolutionary--regarding the nature of art and the possibility of its definition.

This study examines how meritocracy as a collective social imaginary promoting social justice and fairness reproduces class and caste inequalities and fosters ethical violence. We interrogate discourse of merit in the narratives of the professional–managerial class-in-making at an Indian business school. Empirically, we draw on interviews, full-text responses to a qualitative questionnaire, and a student’s poem. We describe how business school students articulate merit as a neoliberal ethic, emphasizing prudential, enterprising attitudes, and responsibility. However, this positive, aspirational façade of merit (...) masks practices of ethical violence, wherein individuals invoke an ethical principle as grounds for moral condemnation and linguistic injuries. These practices of ethical violence desubjectify disadvantaged students and result in silence as a form of inequality. We contribute to organizational research on inequalities by foregrounding ethical violence and desubjectification. We detail the possibilities of discursive agency in contesting and interrupting ethical violence. (shrink)

Comprehensive study of the Puranas, Hindu mythological texts.

Rasa, Dhvani and Rasa-Dhvani are the major critical terms in Sanskrit poetics that developed during the post-Vedic classical period. Rasa is used by a sage named Bharata to denote the aesthetic experience of a theatrical audience. But Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta intermedialize this experience by extending it to a reader of poetry. They argue that rasa is also generated by a linguistic potency called dhvani. Some critics like Bhoja also proposed generation of rasa by pictorial art, and further, some modern critics (...) propose to trace dhvani property in non-verbal arts such as dance and music pleading thereby that these non-verbal arts also generate rasa. The present essay examines these arguments and concludes that generation of rasa is confined to only the audio-visual and verbal arts such as the theatre and poetry, and, dhvani as a specific linguistic potency, is strictly confined to the verbal arts. Its intermedialization is a contradiction in terms. (shrink)

Focuses on the multidisciplinary and cross-cultural perspectives of the concept of experience, and evaluates its cultural value as it is used in science, ...

The author has made a detailed study, more detailed, he rightly claims, than hitherto attempted, of the concept of mimesis in aesthetic thought and has devoted equal space to Greek and Sanskrit writers... Wilamowitz, the doyen of modern classical scholars, describes mimesis as a 'fatal word' 'rapped out' by Plato. But the present author has demonstrated with great cogency that the word was not 'rapped out' by Plato at all, and that the concept and the word are both as old (...) as Greek thought. He shows too, once again with considerable scholarship and perceptiveness, how Greek art was bound to be sensuous, unmystical and also 'formal' in the best sense of the term. In the four long chapters of the first part of his thesis the author gives at every step evidence of deep study and illuminating insight, and can claim originality both in approach and argument... The chapter on Aristotle contains one of the best discussions of mimesis I have read... the most striking portion of his thesis is his elucidation of poetic truth according to Aristotle. -/- -- Prof. S. C. Sengupta, Jadavpur University -/- The author provides a faithful rendering of both Greek and Indian ideas. The work is valuable for its expositions especially of the Indian theories of art. -/- -- V. K. Chari, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (JAAC), USA, Spring 1979 -/- ... A fairly exhaustive comparative study of the concept of mimesis in Greek and Indian aesthetics... wide ranging and at the same time well controlled acquaintance with this proliferating literature is revealed throughout... the co-relation of the Aristotelian linking-up of 'imitation' and 'completion' with Abhinavagupta's integration of imitation with completion is very suggestive and is a help towards the formulation of a universal aesthetic comprising body and soul, the immediate impact of Appearance and the slow revelation of Reality... (the author) has mastered the material and achieved a steady progression in argument so as to sustain the central thesis. -/- -- K. R. S. Iyengar, Professor of English and Vice-Chancellor, Andhra University -/- The book is a significant contribution towards understanding the essentials of Indian aesthetics apropos the Greek (and, through the Greek, the Western)... The author has surveyed the entire field in a masterly manner. His erudition and judgement are both commendable. -/- -- S. K. Ramachandra Rao, Deccan Herald (03.09.1978) -/- ...The author's views hold good even among modern critics including the ones known as 'the Chicago school' and experimental psychologists. -/- -- Indian and Foreign Review (August 1978) -/- The work is a valuable addition to the literature on aesthetics. -/- -- The Indian Express (12.03.1978) -/- The comparison is too smooth and sharply compartmentalized... The book is of great value to those who are interested in the comparative and historical evolution of a very important concept in aesthetics. -/- -- The Hindustan Times (31.12.1978) -/- The work is in two parts. The first part in four chapters examines the concept of imitation in Greek thought, and the second in three chapters explores the meaning of the term in Indian thought... the author offers a brilliant interpretation of Aristotle's theory in the fourth chapter (Pt. 1) which is the best one in the book... The work is a pioneering one and it repays a careful examination. It is probably the first of its kind and every student of aesthetics must read it. -/- -- Prof. P. S. Sastri, Nagpur Times . (shrink)

In this intriguing new book, Indian social theorist Ananta Kumar Giri issues a stirring call for scholars of contemporary social theory and practice to grapple with late modernity's most pressing social and political issues. Giri counterposes Western thought with Indian social theory in a work that ranges across an array of Indian texts and ideas, hitherto ignored by Western scholarship. Included, along with the mainstays of Indian intellectual thought like Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo, are lesser known Indian social theorists, (...) economists, sociologists, and essayists who argue for transcendence of self-interest, social responsibility, and political renewal. Thoughtfully argued and lucidly written, this work offers the reader a genuine 'transdisciplinary' learning experience, going beyond European ethnocentrism to make social theory a truly global conversation. (shrink)

This book explores the dynamics of interaction between pragmatism and spirituality in the constitution and working of consciousness, freedom and solidarity. This book is cross-cultural and transdisciplinary in nature and brings critical and transformative perspectives from different philosophical and spiritual traditions of the world. It discusses the works of seminal thinkers such as William James, Rudolf Steiner, John Dewey, Swami Vivekananda, Martin Heidegger, Claude Levi-Strauss, Jordan Peterson, Slavos Zizek, Paul Valeri and O.V. Vijayan. It also explores dialogues between pragmatism and (...) other philosophical and intellectual traditions such as Semiotics, Saiva Siddhanta, Vedanta, Trika Shaivism and Tantra. It explores themes such as pragmatism and belief, evolution of consciousness and happiness, spiritual pragmatism and economics of solidarity, value levels democracy, the perforamtive as an aspect of spirituality and transformation of political theology from Kingdom of God to Gardens of God. (shrink)

The enhancement of social inclusion is a key to maintaining cohesion in society and to foster the benefits of cultural diversity. Using insights from the Dual Identity Model with a special focus on active categorization, we develop an intervention to increase social inclusion. Our intervention encourages the participants to categorize on a superordinate level while being exposed to their own culture. Across a set of experiments, we test the efficacy of our intervention against control conditions on the effect of social (...) inclusion, measured by perceived social distance. Results show an increase in cultural closeness and provide preliminary support for the use of a DIM-based intervention to increase intercultural inclusion. (shrink)

We thank the authors of commentaries for their thoughtful discussion of our target article. Here we briefly summarize the points made in the target article (Nair-Collins and Joffe 2023). Then we em...

Some patients who have been diagnosed as “dead by neurologic criteria” continue to exhibit certain brain functions, most commonly, neuroendocrine functions. This preservation of neurologic function after the diagnosis of “brain death” or “brainstem death” is an ongoing source of controversy and concern in the medical, bioethics, and legal literatures. Most obviously, if some brain function persists, then it is not the case that all functions of the entire brain have ceased and hence, declaring such a patient to be “dead” (...) would be a false positive, in any nation with so-called “whole brain death” laws. Furthermore, and perhaps more concerning, the preservation of any brain function necessarily entails the preservation of some amount of brain perfusion, thereby raising the concern as to whether additional areas of neural tissue may remain viable, including areas in the brainstem. These and other considerations cast significant doubt on the reliability of diagnosing either “brain death” or “brainstem death.”. (shrink)

Advances in neurobiological knowledge and neuroimaging technology have contributed greatly to our investigations into the nature of self-awareness.

Spoken communication occurs in a “noisy channel” characterized by high levels of environmental noise, variability within and between speakers, and lexical and syntactic ambiguity. Given these properties of the received linguistic input, robust spoken word recognition—and language processing more generally—relies heavily on listeners' prior knowledge to evaluate whether candidate interpretations of that input are more or less likely. Here we compare several broad-coverage probabilistic generative language models in their ability to capture human linguistic expectations. Serial reproduction, an experimental paradigm where (...) spoken utterances are reproduced by successive participants similar to the children's game of “Telephone,” is used to elicit a sample that reflects the linguistic expectations of English-speaking adults. When we evaluate a suite of probabilistic generative language models against the yielded chains of utterances, we find that those models that make use of abstract representations of preceding linguistic context (i.e., phrase structure) best predict the changes made by people in the course of serial reproduction. A logistic regression model predicting which words in an utterance are most likely to be lost or changed in the course of spoken transmission corroborates this result. We interpret these findings in light of research highlighting the interaction of memory-based constraints and representations in language processing. (shrink)

This transdisciplinary project represents the most comprehensive study of imagination to date. The eclectic group of international scholars who comprise _Imagination and Art_ propose bold and innovative theoretical frameworks for conceptualizing imagination in all of its divergent forms.

Our understanding of the human and the social, as well as our realization of these, are in need of fundamental transformations, as our present day use of these are deeply anthropocentric, Eurocentric and dualistic. Human development discourse looks at the human in an adjectival way, so does the social quality approach to the category of the social: neither reflects the profound rethinking both the categories have gone through even in the Western theoretical imagination. In this context, the present essay explores (...) the ways these two categories are being rethought in Western theoretical imagination and discusses the non-anthropocentric and post-anthropocentric conceptualization and realization of the human, which resonates with non-socio-centric and post-social conceptions of society. The essay also opens these two categories to cross-cultural and planetary conversations and on the way rethinks subjectivity, sovereignty, temporality and spatiality. It pleads for a foundational rethinking of human security and social quality and for creative intertwining between the two with visions and practices of practical spirituality. (shrink)

Since at least the 1960s, deontic logicians and ethicists have worried about whether there can be normative systems that allow conflicting obligations. Surprisingly, however, little direct attention has been paid to questions about how we may reason with conflicting obligations. In this paper, I present a problem for making sense of reasoning with conflicting obligations and argue that no deontic logic can solve this problem. I then develop an account of reasoning based on the popular idea in ethics that reasons (...) explain obligations and show that it solves this problem. (shrink)

How do multiple reasons combine to support a conclusion about what to do or believe? This question raises two challenges: How can we represent the strength of a reason? How do the strengths of multiple reasons combine? Analogous challenges about confirmation have been answered using probabilistic tools. Can reductive and nonreductive theories of reasons use these tools to answer their challenges? Yes, or more exactly: reductive theories can answer both challenges. Nonreductive theories, with the help of a result in confirmation (...) theory, can answer one, and there are grounds for optimism that they can answer the other. (shrink)

Reasons can interact in a variety of ways to determine what we ought to do or believe. And there can be cases where two reasons to do an act or have a belief are individually worse than a reason to not do that act or have that belief, but the reasons together are better than the reason to not do that act or have that belief. So the reasons together―which we can call the accrual of those reasons—can have a strength (...) that is an increasing function of the strengths of the individual reasons. In this paper, we will look at how reasons determine what we ought to do and believe in cases where the accrual of reasons is relevant. Our focus will not primarily be on questions about the nature of individual reasons and their weight. Instead, we will at the outset rely on our pretheoretical grip on what reasons there are and how weighty they are individually and ask the more formal or structural question of how to determine the strength of their accrual based on these facts. In looking at these issues, my goal will not be anything as ambitious as developing a full theory of the accrual of reasons. Rather, my goal will be more modest: I will introducing some of the challenges for providing an adequate model and argue that a promising approach to resolving these challenges involves making use of the familiar distinction in moral philosophy between derivative and non-derivative normative notions. (shrink)

Exploring new frontiers of sociology does not mean extending existing theories and methods but rather interrogating some of its uncritically accepted modernist assumptions, such as the equating of society and nation-state, the dualism of individual and society and that of ontology and epistemology. Beyond Sociology explores pathways in which we go beyond sociology in terms of exploring the contours of a transformational sociology; this seeks to transform the assumptions of conventional sociological theorizing and practice as well as modes of sociological (...) imagination. Despite all the waters that have flowed around the world for the last 150 years, contemporary sociology, even so-called global sociology, suffers from what Ulrich Beck called the NATO-like firepower of Western sociology. In this context, sociology has to open itself to transcivilizational dialogues and planetary conversations about the very themes of thinking about self, culture and society. So far, globalization of sociology has meant globalization of themes and methods of modernist sociology, which makes an easy equation between sociology and modernity. For sociologists such as Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck and André Béteille, sociology is a modern discipline and is post-traditional. But if sociology blindly follows the post-traditional teleology of modernity, how can it study varieties of forms of life—traditional, modern, postmodern and transmodern? These varieties of forms of life exist not only in the so-called traditional societies such as India or Lapland but in all contemporary societies—whether India, Indonesia, Sweden, France, Britain, Germany, Singapore, China or the USA. Beyond Sociology thus initially challenges us to go beyond an a priori teleological privileging of the post-traditional telos of modernist sociology. It invites us to make a foundational interrogation of modernist sociology as a prelude to making sociology part of a planetary conversation about the very themes such as society and individual that it seeks to understand. (shrink)

The established view regarding ‘brain death’ in medicine and medical ethics is that patients determined to be dead by neurological criteria are dead in terms of a biological conception of death, not a philosophical conception of personhood, a social construction or a legal fiction. Although such individuals show apparent signs of being alive, in reality they are dead, though this reality is masked by the intervention of medical technology. In this article, we argue that an appeal to the distinction between (...) appearance and reality fails in defending the view that the ‘brain dead’ are dead. Specifically, this view relies on an inaccurate and overly simplistic account of the role of medical technology in the physiology of a ‘brain dead’ patient. We conclude by offering an explanation of why the conventional view on ‘brain death’, though mistaken, continues to be endorsed in light of its connection to organ transplantation and the dead donor rule. (shrink)

Considering the different traditions of cosmopolitan thinking and experimentation, this cutting edge volume examines the contemporary revival of cosmopolitanism as a response to the challenges of living in an interdependent world. Through a unique multidisciplinary approach, it takes the debate beyond the one-sided universalism of the Euro-American world and explores the multiverse of transformations which confront cosmopolitanism. The collection highlights central questions of cosmopolitan responsibility, global citizenship and justice as well as the importance of dialogue among civilizations, cultures, religions and (...) traditions. Exploring the ethical and political dimensions of globalization, it outlines the pathways of going beyond cosmopolitanism by striving for a post-colonial cosmopolis characterized by global justice, trans-civilizational dialogues and dignity for all. (shrink)

CSR in India is mandated through Section 135 of the Companies Act (2013), covering the practice and reporting of social responsibility projects. This paper examines India's CSR framework and reports findings on governance, planning, and implementation from a survey of and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Overall findings reveal several positive aspects and inform us of the challenges that companies and NGOs consider essential. First, an overwhelming majority of companies focused on three investment areas: health, education, and the environment. Second, 88% of (...) companies undertook long-term continuing projects, a positive signal from a social development perspective. Third, 68% reported that their CSR strategy was aligned with their core business strategy. Fourth, a significant majority of the companies have established the required structure for policy development, planning, and periodic monitoring from a governance perspective. Finally, findings on NGOs indicate several elements of preparedness; however, the retention of talented employees is a continual challenge. (shrink)