Entire moral philosophies have been rejected for ruling out the possibility of failure. This “fallibility constraint” (also sometimes called the “error constraint”) cannot be justified by appealing either to Wittgensteinian considerations about rules or to the moral importance of alternate possibilities. I propose instead that support for such a constraint in ethics can be found in the Strawsonian reactive attitudes. I then use the constraint to reveal hidden weaknesses in contemporary contstitutivist strategies to ground moral normativity such as Christine Korsgaard’s, (...) and also to reveal hidden strengths in historical accounts of morality such as Bishop Butler’s. We will have reason to reject any moral theory that makes constitutivism’s mistake, but only because we have reason not to reject the fallibility constraint itself. The way this ethical fallibility can be justified suggests a general principle that could be used to justify fallibility constraints in other normative domains such as practical reason, epistemology, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Over the past fifty years, a number of approaches to the recovery of the multiple pasts of Hinduism have held the field. These include that of the discipline of History of Religions as it is constituted in North America as well as those of the Hindu nationalists, the col and post-colonial historians, and the Subaltern Studies School. None of these approaches have proven satisfactory because, for methodological or ideological reasons, none have adequately addressed human agency or historical change in their (...) accounts of the pasts out of which modern-day Hinduism has emerged. The Hindu nationalist historians hark back to an extended Vedic golden age in which religious practice remained unchanged until the corruptions spawned by the Turkish invasions of the eleventh century. Many Western indologists and historians of religion specializing in Hinduism never leave the unalterable ideal worlds of the scriptures they interpret to investigate the changing real-world contexts out of which those texts emerged. The colonial and postcolonial historians focus on the past two hundred years as the period in which all of the categories through which India continues to interpret itself—including Hinduism—were imposed upon it from without. Adducing examples of Hindu practitioners and thinkers from the colonial period, subaltern theorists and others argue that historical thought is itself alien to the authentic Indian mind. This article suggests a number of interpretive strategies for retrieving the multiple Hinduisms of the past and of the medieval period in particular as that time out of which most modern-day practices of Hinduism emerged. These include an increased emphasis on non-scriptural sources and a focus on regional traditions. (shrink)

Saigle, Dubljevic, and Racine (2018) claim that Libet-style experiments are insufficient to challenge that agents have free will. They support this with evidence from experimen- tal psychology that the folk concept of freedom is consis- tent with monism, that our minds are identical to our brains. However, recent literature suggests that evidence from experimental psychology is less than determinate in this regard, and that folk intuitions are too unrefined as to provide guidance on metaphysical issues like monism. In light of (...) this, it is worthwhile to examine the authors’ insuf- ficiency claim under the assumption that monism is false and dualism true (our minds are not identical to our brains). We conclude that, were dualism true, then Libet- style experiments would tell us no more about freedom and moral responsibility than what the authors initially claimed, thus further bolstering their point that Libet-style experiments are ill-suited to speak to the free will of agents. In what follows we first discuss some of the reasons to be skeptical of using folk intuitions to make claims about the nature of freedom and moral responsibility. We then draw from the work of E. J. Lowe to demonstrate that Libet-style experiments would likely give the same results regardless of the truth of monism or dualism. (shrink)

Consisting of fewer than two hundred verses written in an obscure if not impenetrable language and style, Patanjali's Yoga Sutra is today extolled by the yoga establishment as a perennial classic and guide to yoga practice. As David Gordon White demonstrates in this groundbreaking study, both of these assumptions are incorrect. Virtually forgotten in India for hundreds of years and maligned when it was first discovered in the West, the Yoga Sutra has been elevated to its present iconic (...) status--and translated into more than forty languages--only in the course of the past forty years. White retraces the strange and circuitous journey of this confounding work from its ancient origins down through its heyday in the seventh through eleventh centuries, its gradual fall into obscurity, and its modern resurgence since the nineteenth century. First introduced to the West by the British Orientalist Henry Thomas Colebrooke, the Yoga Sutra was revived largely in Europe and America, and predominantly in English. White brings to life the improbable cast of characters whose interpretations--and misappropriations--of the Yoga Sutra led to its revered place in popular culture today. Tracing the remarkable trajectory of this enigmatic work, White's exhaustively researched book also demonstrates why the yoga of India's past bears little resemblance to the yoga practiced today. (shrink)

Five medieval Sanskrit-language descriptions of a fabulous technique for extracting mercury from the “wells” in which it naturally resides are shown to be remarkably similar to accounts preserved in Chinese and Syriac. Whereas the Sanskrit and Chinese versions date from no earlier than the thirteenth century C.E., the Syriac version dates from no later than the tenth century. The present article first compares and contrasts these three alchemical narratives, and then suggests that all three are perhaps related to a broader (...) and far more ancient Indo-European mythic tradition of a deity associated with the phenomenon of “Fire in Water,” as attested in Vedic, Avestan, Roman, Irish, and Greek sources. All eight of these witnesses appear to attest to ancient religious and scientific traditions relative to geothermal phenomena. (shrink)

As David White explains in the Introduction to Tantra in Practice, Tantra is an Asian body of beliefs and practices that seeks to channel the divine energy that grounds the universe, in creative and liberating ways. The subsequent chapters reflect the wide geographical and temporal scope of Tantra by examining thirty-six texts from China, India, Japan, Nepal, and Tibet, ranging from the seventh century to the present day, and representing the full range of Tantric experience--Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, and even (...) Islamic. Each text has been chosen and translated, often for the first time, by an international expert in the field who also provides detailed background material. Students of Asian religions and general readers alike will find the book rich and informative. The book includes plays, transcribed interviews, poetry, parodies, inscriptions, instructional texts, scriptures, philosophical conjectures, dreams, and astronomical speculations, each text illustrating one of the diverse traditions and practices of Tantra. Thus, the nineteenth-century Indian Buddhist Garland of Gems, a series of songs, warns against the illusion of appearance by referring to bees, yogurt, and the fire of Malaya Mountain; while fourteenth-century Chinese Buddhist manuscripts detail how to prosper through the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper by burning incense, making offerings to scriptures, and chanting incantations. In a transcribed conversation, a modern Hindu priest in Bengal candidly explains how he serves the black Goddess Kali and feeds temple skulls lentils, wine, or rice; a seventeenth-century Nepalese Hindu praise-poem hammered into the golden doors to the temple of the Goddess Taleju lists a king's faults and begs her forgiveness and grace. An introduction accompanies each text, identifying its period and genre, discussing the history and influence of the work, and identifying points of particular interest or difficulty. The first book to bring together texts from the entire range of Tantric phenomena, Tantra in Practice continues the Princeton Readings in Religions series. The breadth of work included, geographic areas spanned, and expert scholarship highlighting each piece serve to expand our understanding of what it means to practice Tantra. (shrink)

Monastic Wanderers: Nāth Yogī Ascetics in Modern South Asia. By Véronique Bouillier. New Delhi: Manohar, 2017; London: Routledge, 2018. Pp. 351. Rs. 1395, £105.00; eBook £35.99.

Words of Destiny: Practicing Astrology in North India. By Caterina Guenzi. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2021. Pp. 376. $95 (cloth); $33.95 (paper).

The Brahmayāmalatantra or Picumata, vol. II: The Religious Observances and Sexual Rituals of the Tantric Practitioner: Chapters 3, 21, and 45. A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation. By Csaba Kiss. Collection Indologie, vol. 130, Early Tantra Series, vol. 3. Pondicherry: Institut Français de Pondichéry/eÉcole Française d’extrême-Orient; Hamburg: Asien-Afrika-Institut, Universität Hamburg, 2015. Pp. 373. €32, Rs. 750.

The Brahmayāmalatantra or Picumata, vol. 1: Chapters 1–2, 39–40, & 83: Revelation, Ritual, and Material Culture in an Early Śaiva Tantra. By Shaman Hatley. Collection Indologie, vol. 133; Early Tantra Series, vol. 5. Pondicherry: institut français de pondiChéry/éCole française d’extrêMe-orient/asien-afrika-institut, universität haMburg, 2018. Pp. xiv + 695. Rs 1600.

In this paper we explore challenges facing leadership in a culture of “all consuming images” from a perspective which claims that images have a moral or normative dimension. The cumulative effect of contemporary image saturation is increased resistance to the normative power of an image. We also suggest that in a culturally diverse global economy, it is necessary to expand the moral aspects of good business leadership beyond providing a basis for productive, coherent group identity within a firm at the (...) expense of seeing outsiders as “others.” We also explore what imagining leadership in business might be like in a world in which visual images shape our understandings of individual and group identity. While our focus is on leadership in business, we also use examples from the political arena. We also suggest that imagining business leadership in the ways we propose may be helpful to women, providing them with an image of business leadership more closely reflective of their experience of corporate culture, its limits, and possibilities. (shrink)

Here we identify approximately 40,000 healthy human volunteers who were intentionally exposed to infectious pathogens in clinical research studies dating from late World War II to the early 2000s. Microbial challenge experiments continue today under contemporary human subject research requirements. In fact, we estimated 4,000 additional volunteers who were experimentally infected between 2010 and the present day. We examine the risks and benefits of these experiments and present areas for improvement in protections of participants with respect to safety. These are (...) the absence of maximum limits to risk and the potential for institutional review boards to include questionable benefits to subjects and society when weighing the risks and benefits of research protocols. The lack of a duty of medical care by physician–investigators to research subjects is likewise of concern. The transparency of microbial challenge experiments and the safety concerns raised in this work may stimulate further dialogue on the risks to participants of human experimentation. (shrink)

In this paper we explore challenges facing leadership in a culture of “all consuming images” from a perspective which claims that images have a moral or normative dimension. The cumulative effect of contemporary image saturation is increased resistance to the normative power of an image. We also suggest that in a culturally diverse global economy, it is necessary to expand the moral aspects of good business leadership beyond providing a basis for productive, coherent group identity within a firm at the (...) expense of seeing outsiders as “others.” We also explore what imagining leadership in business might be like in a world in which visual images shape our understandings of individual and group identity. While our focus is on leadership in business, we also use examples from the political arena. We also suggest that imagining business leadership in the ways we propose may be helpful to women, providing them with an image of business leadership more closely reflective of their experience of corporate culture, its limits, and possibilities. (shrink)

In this paper, we delve into the significant impact of recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the future landscape of work. We discuss the looming possibility of mass unemployment triggered by AI and the societal repercussions of this transition. Despite the challenges this shift presents, we argue that it also unveils opportunities to mitigate social inequalities, combat global poverty, and empower individuals to follow their passions. Amidst this discussion, we also touch upon the existential question of the purpose of (...) human life in a world where machines predominantly perform work. Additionally, we explore the contentious issue of the moral status and rights of AI entities, contemplating the scenario where machines evolve to become sapient and sentient. The paper concludes with a call to action, emphasizing the necessity to acknowledge these potential outcomes and proactively seek solutions, as part of an inevitable journey through the evolution of human society shared with intelligent machines. (shrink)

What ontology does realism about the quantum state suggest? The main extant view in contemporary philosophy of physics is wave-function realism . We elaborate the sense in which wave-function realism does provide an ontological picture, and defend it from certain objections that have been raised against it. However, there are good reasons to be dissatisfied with wave-function realism, as we go on to elaborate. This motivates the development of an opposing picture: what we call spacetime state realism , a view (...) which takes the states associated to spacetime regions as fundamental. This approach enjoys a number of beneficial features, although, unlike wave-function realism, it involves non-separability at the level of fundamental ontology. We investigate the pros and cons of this non-separability, arguing that it is a quite acceptable feature, even one which proves fruitful in the context of relativistic covariance. A companion paper discusses the prospects for combining a spacetime-based ontology with separability, along lines suggested by Deutsch and Hayden. (shrink)

Robust stakeholder engagement in health research requires broad communicative integration, not only of patients but also other stakeholders such as health system leaders, clinicians, and researcher...

David Gordon; The Concept of the Hidden Curriculum, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 16, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 187–198, https://doi.org/10.1111/.

Epictetus was born a slave. His master, Epaphroditus, allowed him to attend the lectures of the Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus and later gave him his freedom. From numerous references in his Discourses it is clear that Epictetus valued freedom as a precious possession. He would have been on the side of the many people living now who, while not actually enslaved, are denied true freedom by the harsh circumstances of their lives. Epictetus's teachings about freedom and human dignity have echoed (...) through the millennia-in the writings of Spinoza, Thomas Paine and Martin Luther King, Jr., to name a few. He was much concerned with human behavior. His advice to not worry about what is not in our control is pointedly relevant to our busy modern society-which is often fraught with anxiety. Some people might argue that what Epictetus taught is not serious philosophy, more like self-help. But the range of topics addressed by the essays in this book clearly indicates that the teachings of Epictetus provide strong incentive to present day philosophical thinking. "Epictetus: His Continuing Influence and Contemporary Relevance" is the title of a conference on Epictetus held at Rochester Institute of Technology in April 2012, when many of the ideas in these essays were first presented. (shrink)

The philosophy of Epicurus (c. 341-271 B. C. E.), has been a quietly pervasive influence for more than two millennia. At present, when many long revered ideologies are proven empty, Epicureanism is powerfully and refreshingly relevant, offering a straightforward way of dealing with the issues of life and death. The chapters in this book provide a kaleidoscope of contemporary opinions about Epicurus' teachings. They tell us also about the archeological discoveries that promise to augment the scant remains we have of (...) Epicurus's own writing. the breadth of this new work will be welcomed by those who value Epicurean philosophy as a scholarly and personal resource for contemporary life. "Epicurus: His Continuing Influence and Contemporary Relevance," is the title of a 2002 conference on Epicurus held at Rochester Institute of Technology, when many of the ideas here were first presented. (shrink)

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume 60, Issue 1, Page 88-117, March 2022.

First ever English Translation of Philippe PInel's 2nd Medico-Philosophical Treatise on Mental Alienation. The founder of French psychiatry wrote Medico-Philosophical Treatise on Mental Alienation in 1800 and reworked it nine years later. This book is the "Entirely Reworked and Extensively Expanded" version from 1809. Today, it can give historians of medicine and psychiatrists an overview of mental illnesses as they were viewed in that era. The author, Philippe Pinel, became known as the doctor who worked to free the insane from (...) chains. (shrink)

David Gordon; Rules and the Effectiveness of the Hidden Curriculum, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 17, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 207–218, https://.

David Gordon; Theory and the Teacher's Perspective, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 14, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 31–37, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.