The September 2006 military coup against the Thaksin government in Thailand has had a profound impact on Thai politics. It has arrested the process of democratic consolidation that was set in motion in the country in the 1990s. Although many of Thaksin's policies lacked the spirit of democratic governance, he was democratically elected and was ousted from power unconstitutionally. The entire tenure of Thaksin has brought to the fore two deep cleavages in Thailand. The first of these is the deep (...) divide between the rural and urban electoral constituencies. The former provided a major vote bank with little bearing on the dispersion of power and resources that was effectively dominated by the latter. Thaksin and his populist policies effectively undermined the urban electorate and strengthened the rural constituency. The second and perhaps structurally more significant tension is that which has developed between the new business elite and the old establishment elite that comprise the monarchy, military, and the bureaucracy. This old elite has been at the forefront of displacing Thaksin through its fear of loss of control over the domestic political process. The drawn out confrontation that has spawned two social movements has significantly raised the country's political temperature and there is the real potential for the situation to deteriorate into violence. Despite these changes, a number of continuities unique to the Thai political situation continue to obtain as well. (shrink)

Perceptual load plays a critical role in identification and awareness of stimuli. Given the differences in emotion–attention interactions, we investigated the perception of distractor emotional faces in two different load conditions under divided attention with a task based on the inattentional blindness paradigm. Participants performed a low- or high-load task with a string of letters presented against a happy, sad or neutral face (in a circular form) as the background. Participants were asked to identify the face that appeared in the (...) critical trial. Results indicate an interaction between emotion and load. First, identification of faces with happy expression was better than chance and unaffected by load. Second, performance was worse than chance for faces with sad expression in the high-load condition, indicating inhibition of unattended sad distractor faces in the critical trial. This indicates that inhibitory processes during a difficult attentional task under divided attention influence subsequent perception of distractor stimuli especially sad faces. The results have implications for the theories of selective attention as well as the role of emotions in conscious perception. (shrink)

Despite the rapid adoption of technology in human resource departments, there is little empirical work that examines the potential challenges of algorithmic decision-making in the recruitment process. In this paper, we take the perspective of job applicants and examine how they perceive the use of algorithms in selection and recruitment. Across four studies on Amazon Mechanical Turk, we show that people in the role of a job applicant perceive algorithm-driven recruitment processes as less fair compared to human only or algorithm-assisted (...) human processes. This effect persists regardless of whether the outcome is favorable to the applicant or not. A potential mechanism underlying algorithm resistance is the belief that algorithms will not be able to recognize their uniqueness as a candidate. Although the use of algorithms has several benefits for organizations such as improved efficiency and bias reduction, our results highlight a potential cost of using them to screen potential employees during recruitment. (shrink)

This article argues that there is no performative self-contradiction involved in reports of selfless consciousness, at least in the non-pathological sense of the term. This is because what is central to the experience of selfless consciousness is a different kind of relation of the self with the rest of the world and, therefore, it is not a case of dissolution or decimation of the self. Such an understanding of selflessness can easily distinguish spiritual selflessness from pathological forms such as depersonalisation. (...) This article seeks to provide an explanation for why reports are made of there being no self or subjectivity by appealing to the notion of attentional saliency. (shrink)

The notion of epistemic injustice has become an important topic of inquiry in recent times. It refers to the injustice committed to a person when her claim to knowledge is not given due consideration. This article argues that there are two major sources of epistemic injustice: One is the dominating tendencies present in us, and the other is susceptibility to cognitive biases and distortions. When societies become more complex, injustice increases and one can see countless instances of epistemic injustice in (...) everyday life. To reduce epistemic injustice, one has to tackle both sources. Increasing cooperative behaviour is the key in this regard which, in turn, may require revisiting the way the self is automatically understood. (shrink)

The paper seeks to argue that the feeling of being part of a larger whole, considered to be a major feature of spiritual experience in some traditions, amounts to a change in the way the self is pre-reflectively understood. Further, the paper argues that some recent developments in the study of cognition support the case for such a revision in self-conception, and this can be used to build up a secular understanding of spirituality. The paper proceeds by making use of (...) Abraham Maslow's account of peak experience along with some accounts of both ancient and contemporary forms of spirituality to argue that the feeling of being part of a larger whole amounts to a significant shift from the separative self-conception implicit in everyday behavior. Subsequently, it is argued that some extant theories on cognition point at the illusory nature of separative self-conception. (shrink)

We examined proactive and reactive control effects in the context of task-relevant happy, sad, and angry facial expressions on a face-word Stroop task. Participants identified the emotion expressed by a face that contained a congruent or incongruent emotional word. Proactive control effects were measured in terms of the reduction in Stroop interference as a function of previous trial emotion and previous trial congruence. Reactive control effects were measured in terms of the reduction in Stroop interference as a function of current (...) trial emotion and previous trial congruence. Previous trial negative emotions exert greater influence on proactive control than the positive emotion. Sad faces in the previous trial resulted in greater reduction in the Stroop interference for happy faces in the current trial. However, current trial angry faces showed stronger adaptation effects compared to happy faces. Thus, both proactive and reactive control mechanisms are dependent on emotional valence of task-relevant stimuli. (shrink)

Unconscious thought theory (UTT) states that all information is taken into account and the attributes are weighted optimally resulting in better decisions in complex decision problems during unconscious thought. Very few studies have investigated the actual amount of information processed in the unconscious thought condition. We hypothesized that only a small subset of information might be considered during unconscious thought (like conscious thought). To test this possibility and to explore the way attribute information is selected and combined, we performed computer (...) simulations on the datasets used by previous researchers. The simulations showed that considering a small subset (3-4) of attributes, yields results comparable to previous studies. There is no need to posit infinite capacity in the unconscious thought condition. The results also suggest that weight information is used for attribute selection that could potentially explain the difficulties in replicating the deliberation-without-attention effect. (shrink)

In the present research, we examine the relation between leader mindfulness and employee performance through the lenses of organizational justice and leader-member relations. We hypothesize that employees of more mindful leaders view their relations as being of higher leader-member exchange quality. We further hypothesize two mediating mechanisms of this relation: increased interpersonal justice and reduced employee stress. In other words, we posit that employees of more mindful leaders feel treated with greater respect and experience less stress. Finally, we predict that (...) LMX quality serves as a mediator linking leader mindfulness to employee performance—defined in terms of both in-role and extra-role performance. Across two field studies of triadic leader-employee-peer data and dyadic leader–employee data, we find support for this sequential mediation model. We discuss implications for theorizing on leadership, organizational justice, business ethics, LMX, and mindfulness, as well as practical implications. (shrink)

It has been argued that attention and awareness might oppose each other given that attending to an adapting stimulus weakens its afterimage. We argue instead that the type of attention guided by the spread of attention and the level of processing is critical and might result in differences in awareness using afterimages. Participants performed a central task with small, large, local or global letters and a blue square as an adapting stimulus in two experiments and indicated the onset and offset (...) of the afterimage. We found that increases in the spatial spread of attention resulted in the decrease of afterimage duration. In terms of levels of processing, global processing produced larger afterimage durations with stimuli controlled for spatial extent. The results suggest that focused or distributed attention produce different effects on awareness, possibly through their differential interactions with polarity dependent and independent processes involved in the formation of color afterimages. (shrink)

25 years ago, when AI & Society was launched, the emphasis was, and still is, on dehumanisation and the effects of technology on human life, including reliance on technology. What we forgot to take into account was another very great danger to humans. The pervasiveness of computer technology, without appropriate security safeguards, dehumanises us by allowing criminals to steal not just our money but also our confidential and private data at will. Also, denial-of-service attacks prevent us from accessing the information (...) we need when we want it. We are being dehumanised not by the technology but by criminals who use the ubiquity of the technology and its lack of security to steal from us and prevent us from doing what we want. What is more interesting is that this malevolent use of the technology doesn’t come from monolithic corporate structures eager to control our lives but mainly from individuals keen to demonstrate their knowledge of the technology for social networking purposes. The aim of this paper is to turn the clock back 25 years and present an alternative perspective: the single, biggest threat of dehumanisation is not the pervasiveness and ubiquity of computers but the lack of ensuring that humans are provided with the basic security they need for using the technology safely and securely. Cyberspace is not a safe space to be. This was something that even far-sighted researcher colleagues in the 1970s and 1980s overlooked. The paper will explore where we went wrong 25 years ago in our predictions and concerns. We will also present a scenario that allows future generations to have a safer cyberworld. (shrink)

PurposeThe paper seeks to explore the interrelation among the phenomena of wandering mind, free-floating self and intuitive dualism. Further, the paper aims at looking at the possibility of revising the self-conception by changing the wandering nature of mind.MethodThe paper proceeds by demonstrating the existence of the wandering mind and the presence of a particular kind of reflexive self-conception and then contends that reflexive self-conception, characterised in terms of free-floating nature of the self, can be understood to be the result of (...) intuitive dualism along with the wandering mind.Result and DiscussionThe relationship between wandering mind and reflexive self-conception brings out the possibility of revising the reflexive self-conception through practices such as mindfulness because it opens ways to reflexively realise embodiment and reduces the wandering nature of mind. This can possibly give rise to a different kind of self-conception that is more holistic in outlook and is less separative or free-floating. (shrink)

Contributed research papers on various aspects of Hindu philoosphy.

Search engines are important contemporary sources of information and contribute to shaping our beliefs about the world. Each time they are consulted, various algorithms filter and order content to show us relevant results for the inputted search query. Because these search engines are frequently and widely consulted, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of the distinctively epistemic role that these algorithms play in the background of our online experiences. To aid in such understanding, this paper argues that search (...) engine algorithms are providers of “bent testimony”—that, within certain contexts of interactions, users act as if these algorithms provide us with testimony—and acquire or alter beliefs on that basis. Specifically, we treat search engine algorithms as if they were asserting as true the content ordered at the top of a search results page—which has interesting parallels with how we might treat an ordinary testifier. As such, existing discussions in the philosophy of testimony can help us better understand and, in turn, improve our interactions with search engines. By explicating the mechanisms by which we come to accept this “bent testimony,” our paper discusses methods to help us control our epistemic reliance on search engine algorithms and clarifies the normative expectations one ought to place on the search engines that deploy these algorithms. (shrink)

The role of holistic or parts-based processing in face identification has been explored mostly with neutral faces. In the current study, we investigated the nature of processing (holistic vs. parts) in recognition memory for faces with emotional expressions. There were two phases in this experiment: learning phase and test phase. In the learning phase participants learned face–name associations of happy, neutral, and sad faces. The test phase consisted of a two-choice recognition test (whole face, eyes, or mouth) given either immediately (...) or after a 24-hour delay. Results indicate that emotional faces were remembered better than neutral faces and performance was better with whole faces as compared to isolated parts. The performance in immediate and delayed recognition interacted with emotional information. Sad eyes and happy mouth were remembered better in the delayed recognition condition. These results suggest that in addition to holistic processing, specific parts–emotion combinations play a critical role in delayed recognition memory. (shrink)

Specific inhibition of gene expression by antisense agents provides the basis for rational drug discovery based on molecular targets. Due to the specificity of Watson‐Crick base‐pair hybridization, antisense oligodeoxynucleotides have been used extensively in attempts to inhibit gene expression in both in vitro and in vivo models. Analogues modified from normal phosphodiester oligodeoxynucleotides have entered clinical trials against diseases including AIDS and cancer. Although the precise mechanism of action of these drugs has not been clarified, these oligodeoxynucleotides offer considerable promise (...) as novel molecular therapeutics. We review the recent attempts to harness the therapeutic potential of these oligodeoxynucleotides and appraise the near‐term prospects for antisense technology. (shrink)

The Hindu ethic of cow protectionism is legislatively interpreted in many Indian states through the criminalisation of cow slaughter, and beef consumption, obscuring dairying’s direct role in the butchery of spent female and unproductive male bovines. Cow milk, however, is celebrated as sacred in scriptural and ritual Hinduism, and mobilised by commercial dairying, as well as by right-wing Hindu groups to advance the idea of a Hindu Indian nation. In order to fully protect cows from the harms of human exploitation, (...) it is vital to problematise milk as a benign, rightful product for humans to consume, including its use in Hindu beliefs, rituals and identity. The paper applies feminist vegan critiques to two Hindu legends commonly invoked to promote milk consumption: the boy-god Krishna’s great love for butter and the mythology of the gods and demons churning the Ocean of Milk to attain ambrosia. These critiques unsettle the core relationship of the Hindu to the cow as a lactating mother and provoke the idea that the original sacred milk in Hinduism in fact is plant-based and vegan. (shrink)

Influential in shaping the practice of Chinese medicine, acupuncture is an ancient form of healing based on theories of traditional medicine. The clashes between western science and traditional knowledge have ushered Chinese medicine into a new era, so has acupuncture. The major challenges facing researchers are whether it is feasible to scientificize acupuncture and how to do so if feasible. Causing unprecedented responses at home and abroad, the publication of The New Acupuncture ( Xin zhenjiu xue ???? ) by Zhu (...) Lian (1909-1987) in 1951 dramatized the already heated discussion. This medical treatise was considered as the pioneer in scientification of acupuncture in mainland China since 1949. The purpose of this paper is to (1) put Zhu Lian’s The New Acupuncture and its relevant discussions back into the historical context of Chinese medicine in mainland China and Hong Kong in the 1950s, and (2) analyze the arguments set forth by her and other practitioners so as to get a clearer picture of how the issue on scientificizing acupuncture was being dealt with. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis study examined the performance of sixth graders in Hong Kong on a number sense three-tier test and identified their possible misconceptions about number sense. The NSTTT compri...

Humans tend to seek their identity as entities existing over a period of time by making narratives. The paper argues that seeking diachronic self-identity through narratives or stories results in the self-experience being one of separation or alienation from the real world. This happens because language is primarily a form of secondary representation, and the means by which we attempt to find identity often appear in the form of narratives. The dominance of the metaphor of life as a journey shows (...) this. The remedy is to reduce the hold of narrativity by making self-experience fundamentally episodic. (shrink)

Social theories are heavily context-embedded, and their creation is naturally interwoven with particular contexts. Once they are disseminated within a new societal landscape, adjustments and adaptation should be made. This paper investigates the entangled contexts of the social quality theory and its applicability to Asian societies. rough a comparative analysis of the key questions that this theory purports to answer, as well as its proposed answers and solutions, the study evaluates the purpose, features and functions of the theory. Moreover, in (...) relation to four sorts of 'conditional factors', this article also proposes extending social quality studies into four approaches that should lead the studies beyond the level of description into new forms of theory. The article also explores the theory's power to explain the Asian social quality systems and their implications for global social development. (shrink)

How do cognitive neuroscientists explain phenomena like memory or language processing? This book examines the different kinds of experiments and manipulative research strategies involved in understanding and eventually explaining such phenomena. Against this background, it evaluates contemporary accounts of scientific explanation, specifically the mechanistic and interventionist accounts, and finds them to be crucially incomplete. Besides, mechanisms and interventions cannot actually be combined in the way usually done in the literature. This book offers solutions to both these problems based on insights (...) from experimental practice. It defends a new reading of the interventionist account, highlights the importance of non-interventionist studies for scientific inquiry, and supplies a taxonomy of experiments that makes it easy to see how the gaps in contemporary accounts of scientific explanation can be filled. The book concludes that a truly empirically adequate philosophy of science must take into account a much wider range of experimental research than has been done to date. With the taxonomy provided, this book serves a stepping-stone leading into a new era of philosophy of science—for cognitive neuroscience and beyond. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a critique of taxonomic pluralism, namely the view that there are multiple correct ways to classify entities into natural kinds within a given scientific domain. I argue that taxonomic pluralism, as an anti-essentialist position, fails to provide a realist alternative to taxonomic monism, i.e., the view that there is only one correct way to classify entities into natural kinds within a given scientific domain. To establish my argument, I first explain why the naturalist approach to (...) natural kinds adopted by pluralists requires them to give up the mind-independence criterion of reality presupposed by monists. Next, I survey two types of pluralist account. I argue that, while the modest pluralist account is not pluralistic enough, the radical pluralist account fails to come up with an alternative criterion of reality that is robust enough to differentiate its position from anti-realism about natural kinds. I conclude by drawing out the implications of my critique for the essentialism/anti-essentialism debate about natural kinds. (shrink)

This article aims to highlight the importance of organizational climate with both destructive and constructive deviance behaviour in different cultural setting with workplace as a common ground. First, we discuss the need for research in workplace deviance especially destructive and constructive deviance behaviour with the review of previous studies from deviance literature. Next, we present the importance of climate and culture with both destructive and constructive deviance by proposing relationship among them with the help of a framework. The presented theoretical (...) framework can be useful for conducting future empirical research. Finally, we present the conclusion and future research in conducting cross-national research with respect to deviance. (shrink)

We present a Revised Projectivity Calculus that extends the scope of inclusion and exclusion inferences derivable under the Projectivity Calculus developed by Icard :705–725, 2012). After pointing out the inadequacies of C, we introduce four opposition properties which have been studied by Chow Proceedings of the 18th Amsterdam Colloquium, Springer, Berlin, 2012; Beziau, Georgiorgakis New dimensions of the square of opposition, Philosophia Verlag GmbH, München, 2017) and are more appropriate for the study of exclusion reasoning. Together with the monotonicity properties, (...) the OPs will form the basis of RC instead of the additive/multiplicative properties used in C. We also prove some important results of the OPs and their relation with the MPs. We then introduce a set of projectivity signatures together with the associated operations and conditions for valid inferences, and develop RC by inheriting the key features of C. We then show that under RC, we can derive some inferences that are not derivable under C. We finally discuss some properties of RC and point to possible directions of further studies. (shrink)

In the first half of this paper, we present a fragment of relational syllogisms named RELSYLL consisting of quantified statements with a special set of numerical quantifiers, and introduce a number of concepts that are useful for the later sections, including indirect reduction, quantifier transformations and equivalence of syllogisms. After determining the valid and invalid syllogisms in RELSYLL, we then introduce two Derivation Methods which can be used to derive valid relational syllogisms based on known valid simple syllogisms. We also (...) show that the two Methods are sound and complete for RELSYLL. In the second half of this paper, we discuss ways to extend the Derivation Methods, including the use of more valid syllogisms and the use of existential assumptions. In this way, we are able to derive more relational syllogisms that contain other types of non-classical quantifiers, including “only” and proportional quantifiers. Finally, we state and prove a proposition concerning the relationship between the two Methods. (shrink)