How is social inequality reproduced through day-to-day practices? In this commentary, we use the geographical context of Mexico City to argue that social inequality is maintained by “class work” of elites. Specifically, we discuss how (1) urban planning crystallizes class boundaries, (2) private school education reproduces them, and (3) tipping prevents their disruption.

This book presents a collection of essays, setting out both the special concern of classical Indian thought and some of its potential contributions to global philosophy. It presents some key arguments made by different schools about this special concern: the way in which attainment of knowledge of reality transforms human nature in a fundamentally liberating way. It then goes on to look in detail at two areas in contemporary global philosophy - the ethics of difference, and the metaphysics of consciousness (...) - where this classical Indian commitment to the spiritually transformative power of knowledge can lead to critical insights, even for those who do not share its presuppositions. Close reading of technical Indian texts is combined with wide-ranging and often comparative analysis of philosophical issues, to derive original arguments from the Indian material through an analytic method that is seldom mastered by philosophers of non-western traditions. (shrink)

This book studies the history of intercultural human rights. It examines the foundational elements of human rights in the East and the West and provides a comparative analysis of the independent streams of thought originating from the two different geographic spaces. It traces the genesis of the idea of human rights back to ancient Indian and Greco-Roman texts, especially concepts such as the Rigvedic universal moral law, the Upanishadic narratives, the Romans' model of governance, the rule of law, and administration (...) of justice. It also looks at Cicero's concept of rights and duties which focuses on quality of compassion and fair play, and Seneca's expositions on mercy, empathy, justice and checks on the arbitrary exercise of power. An important contribution, this book fills a significant gap in the study of human rights. It will be useful for students and researchers of political science, ancient history, religion and civilizations, philosophy, history, human rights, governance, law, sociology, and South Asian studies. The book also caters to general readers interested in the history of human rights. (shrink)

Arindam Chakrabarti is something of a connoisseur's philosopher, best appreciated by those who know him. Books by him have not piled up over the years of his lengthy career, books which might have made their way into the obtuse consciousness of departments of Western philosophy, which might have made Indian thought somehow sensible to those comfortable with the norms of the dominant Anglo-American analytic tradition. Yet there is hardly anyone working today who was so thoroughly trained in that Anglo-American tradition, (...) who also has at his command a wonderful range of Sanskrit philosophical materials, and is so well-positioned to write such... (shrink)

The COVID-19 vaccine has been a miraculous, life-saving advance, offering staggering efficacy in adults, and was developed with astonishing speed. The time from sequencing the virus to authorizing the first COVID-19 vaccine was so brisk even the optimists appear close-minded. Yet, simultaneously, United States’ COVID-19 vaccination roll-out and related policies have contained missed opportunities, errors, run counter to evidence-based medicine, and revealed limitations in the judgment of public policymakers. Misplaced utilization, contradictory messaging, and poor deployment in those who would benefit (...) most—the elderly and high-risk—alongside unrealistic messaging, exaggeration, and coercion in those who benefit least—young, healthy Americans—is at the heart. It is important to consider the history of COVID-19 vaccines to identify where we succeeded and where we failed, and the effects that these errors may have more broadly on vaccination hesitancy and routine childhood immunization programs in the decades to come. (shrink)

This article analyzes how the medical gaze made possible by MRI operates in radiological laboratories. It argues that although computer-assisted medical imaging technologies such as MRI shift radiological analysis to the realm of cyborg visuality, radiological analysis continues to depend on visualization produced by other technologies and diagnostic inputs. In the radiological laboratory, MRI is used to produce diverse sets of images of the internal parts of the body to zero in and visually extract the pathology. Visual extraction of pathology (...) becomes possible, however, because of the visual training of the radiologists in understanding and interpreting anatomic details of the whole body. These two levels of viewing constitute the bifocal vision of the radiologists. To make these levels of viewing work complementarily, the body, as it is presented in the body atlases, is made notational. (shrink)

While it is known that reward induces attentional prioritization, it is not clear what effect reward-learning has when associated with stimuli that are not fully perceived. The masked priming paradigm has been extensively used to investigate the indirect impact of brief stimuli on response behavior. Interestingly, the effect of masked primes is observed even when participants choose their responses freely. While classical theories assume this process to be automatic, recent studies have provided evidence for attentional modulations of masked priming effects. (...) Most such studies have manipulated bottom-up or top-down modes of attentional selection, but the role of “newer” forms of attentional control such as reward-learning and selection history remains unclear. In two experiments, with number and arrow primes, we examined whether reward-mediated attentional selection modulates masked priming when responses are chosen freely. In both experiments, we observed that primes associated with high-reward lead to enhanced free-choice priming compared to primes associated with no-reward. The effect was seen on both proportion of choices and response times, and was more evident in the faster responses. In the slower responses, the effect was diminished. Our study adds to the growing literature showing the susceptibility of masked priming to factors related to attention and executive control. (shrink)

The target article proposes a model involving the important but not well-investigated topics of curiosity and creativity. The model, however, falls short of providing convincing explanations of the basic mechanisms underlying these phenomena. We outline the importance of mechanistic thinking in dealing with the concepts outlined in this article specifically and within psychology and cognitive neuroscience in general.

Over the last decade, scholars across the wide spectrum of the discipline of sociology have started to reengage with questions on morality and moral phenomena. The continued wave of research in this field, which has come to be known as the new sociology of morality, is a lively research program that has several common grounds with scholarship in the field of business ethics. The aim of this thematic symposium is to open constructive dialogues between these two areas of study. In (...) this introductory essay, we briefly present the project of the new sociology of morality and discuss its relevance for business ethics. We also review the contributions to this thematic symposium and identify four specific domains where future research can contribute to fruitful dialogues between the two fields. (shrink)

This article presents material from my ethnographic study in Śringēri, south India, the site of a powerful 1200yearold Advaitic monastery that has been historically an interpreter of ancient Hindu moral treatises. A vibrant diverse local culture that provides plural sources of moral authority makes Sringeri a rich site for studying moral discourse. Through a study of two conversational narratives, this essay illustrates how the moral self is not an ossified product of written texts and codes, but is dynamic, gen dered, (...) and emergent, endowed with historical and political agency and an aesthetic capacity that mediates many normative sources to articulate "appropriate" conduct. In so doing, the essay shows the value of including oral narrative in ethical inquiry, especially in narrative ethics, which, for most part, has focused on written sources. (shrink)

Gender mainstreaming has been prioritised within the national agricultural policies of many countries, including Nepal. Yet gender mainstreaming at the national policy level does not always work to effect change when policies are implemented at the local scale. In less-developed nations such as Nepal, it is rare to find a critical analysis of the mainstreaming process and its successes or failures. This paper employs a critical gender analysis approach to examine the gender mainstreaming efforts in Nepal as they move from (...) agricultural policies to practices. The research involved a structured review of 10 key national agricultural policy documents, 14 key informant interviews, and two focus group discussions with female and male smallholder farmers. Results suggest that gender mainstreaming in national agricultural policy and practice has largely failed. The creation of the Gender Equity and Social Inclusion (GESI) section within the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development is paradoxical to gender-responsive agricultural innovation because it has received limited human and financial resources with an expectation for women to manage this policy development in informal and largely unrecognized ways. At the regional and local levels, implementation of fundamental gender equity and social inclusion procedures—such as gender-responsive planning and budgeting—has become staff responsibility without requisite formal training, gender sensitization, and follow-up. In Nepal, women as smallholder farmers or agricultural labourers are recognized as a vulnerable group in need of social protection, but the welfare approach to gender mainstreaming has achieved little in terms of gender equity, social inclusion, and agricultural sustainability. This paper concludes that what is generally missing is a systemic transformation of gender roles and relations in agriculture, with policies that would support rural women's empowerment through the provision of economic and political rights and entitlement to productive resources. (shrink)

The Gita is a central text in Hindu traditions, and commentaries on it express a range of philosophical-theological positions. Two of the most significant commentaries are by Sankara, the founder of the Advaita or Non-Dualist system of Vedic thought and by Ramanuja, the founder of the Visistadvaita or Qualified Non-Dualist system. Their commentaries offer rich resources for the conceptualization and understanding of divine reality, the human self, being, the relationship between God and human, and the moral psychology of action and (...) devotion. This book approaches their commentaries through a study of the interaction between the abstract atman (self) and the richer conception of the human person. While closely reading the Sanskrit commentaries, Ram-Prasad develops reconstructions of each philosophical-theological system, drawing relevant and illuminating comparisons with contemporary Christian theology and Western philosophy. (shrink)

Vedānta endeavours to base itself essentially on the facts of experience—in the fullest sense of the term. It recognizes the occurrence of everyday experience and the so-called fact of evil, but it refuses to view them as real. The real, it says, like Hegel, does not exist, and that which exists is not real. Evil is only an “existent"—as all this Samsara is—but not the ultimate Real. But it will be at once objected that if evil is an appearance, a (...) Maya, why should this appearance appear at all? If it has no foundation in reality, how and why does it occur at all? Further, how can anything be known as real unless it should appear ? Reality must appear. (shrink)

Cognitive architectures, like programming languages, make commitments only at the implementation level and have limited explanatory power. Their universality implies that it is hard, if not impossible, to justify them in detail from finite quantities of data. It is more fruitful to focus on particular tasks such as language understanding and propose testable theories at the computational and algorithmic levels.

In this paper, perhaps the first of its kind, an attempt is made to elucidate and examine the Vedantic theory of soul constructed on the basis of the experience of dreamless sleep which, being radically and qualitatively different from waking and dreaming states, is considered by the Vedantins as a state of temporarily purified individual soul (atman), a state of pure substantial consciousness. They take the experience of dreamless sleep as a model experience of the soul's final liberation from the (...) body and its internal as well as external faculties. The ultimate liberation, according to the Vedantins, is a state of total identification of the individual soul with the Universal Soul (Brahman), the summum bonum of every Vedantin. The paper also includes a critique of the Vedantic soul theory by the Buddhists who vehemently deny any autonomous and substantial soul whose essence is unchangingly permanent, pure consciousness and self-illuminating knowledge. The soul is instead interpreted by the Buddhists as a product of the functioning of a person's psycho-physical organism and a mere subject of knowing, thinking, desiring, etc. The analysis further shows that the Vedanta, especially the Advaita Vedanta, metaphysics of soul is inadequate in many respects and mainly based on a priori and scriptural arguments and emotive appeals, whereas the Buddhists deny any kind of autonomous and permanent agent of knowing, thinking and desiring by successfully reducing substantial consciousness to mere acts of knowing. (shrink)

As the title of the present article shows, it highlights the three philosophically integrated areas – (1) pramāṇa-epistemology (theory of comprehensive knowledge involving both perception and inference), (2) logic (although a part of pramāṇa-epistemology, it has two modes, namely, inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning), and (3) language (or semantics, i.e. the double negation theory of meaning, which falls under inference). These are interconnected as well as overlapping within the Buddhist mainstream tradition of the process philosophy as opposed to the substantialist (...) philosophy. The same is the case with the three celebrated Buddhist thinkers – Vasubandhu, Dignāga (also spelt as Diññāṇa), and Dharmakīrti – who develop their radical and critical views focusing on these areas in historical-cum-philosophical order. It is worth noting that within the same mainstream Buddhist tradition, each one of the three thinkers picks up the problematic issues from their predecessors – from the Buddha to their immediate predecessors respectively – for their solutions against the backdrop of the two conflicting mainstream traditions – Buddhist and non-Buddhist. The central focus of these thinkers is first to identify the crucial issues, doctrinal principles, terminology, and methodology in their own ways and conceptual frameworks, which generate not only the mutual conflicts in the course of dialogues but also strengthen their positions by means of their new radical ideas, innovations, terminologies, methodologies, and doctrinal principles. As a result, the three selected areas and their crucial issues are explained, elaborated, and interpretated for better understanding. All of which are rooted in the Buddha’s path of wisdom, ethics, and liberation from the human predicament (duḥkha-nivṛtti). In this grand project of the deepest concerns, the Buddha utilized multiple strategies like understanding and controlling the problematic nature of the mind (Pāli citta, manasa) and its concomitance (Pāli cetasika, dhammā) by means of the concentrative meditation (Pāli jhāna, Sanskrit (hereafter Skt., dhyāna), cultivation of knowledge (Pāli vijjā, Skt. vidyā) and conduct/moral purity (Pāli caraṇa, Skt. ācaraṇa), destruction of afflictions/defilements (Pāli kilesa, Skt. kleśa), critical and logical thinking with valid arguments, and so on. His disciples also treat him as the possessor of valid method, arguments, meaning, practice, and purpose (Skt. pramāṇabhūta, the term used by Dignāga). He believed in the common humanity as the community of sufferers and the autonomy of every human being (Pāli attakāra), but strongly rejected the hierarchy of humanity on the basis of caste, birth, and dogmatic religious identity. For these reasons, following the Buddha and his celebrated followers like Vasubandhu, Dignāga, and Dharmakīrti, my task in this article is how to clearly and elaborately discuss the above identified issues and theories, first to understand them for myself and then logically prove the whole process of knowledge and the designed purpose through communication to those who have the intention to hear and understand the framework of common language for their benefits. I wish the readers like students and young teachers benefit from my research work. Further, since my learning of the Tibetan language is zero, but comfortable in Sanskrit and Pāli, I have been heavily dependent on three great modern thinkers who have widely written independently and also translated the Buddhist Tibetan texts, which were translated from the original Sanskrit texts now lost, into English in the areas of Buddhist epistemology, logic, and semantics. These modern scholars are Masaaki Hattori, Shoryo Katsura, and Richard Hayes. Besides them, I have also little benefitted from some other scholars who have worked in the same areas. (shrink)

Contemporary consciousness studies, where it is not explicitly religious, is mostly physicalist. Theories of self and consciousness in classical Hindu thought can easily be seen to contribute to religious issues in consciousness studies. But it is also the case that there is much in that that can be useful within broadly physicalist parameters of study as well. The Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya schools, while having (nonphysicalist) soteriological goals for the metaphysical self, nonetheless provide theories of its relationship with consciousness that allow (...) for interpretative strategies that can make their theories relevant to a broadly physicalist study of consciousness. Advaita Vedānta cannot be so interpreted, but its inquiry into the nature of consciousness can provide material for a fundamental critique of the project of objectifying consciousness. (shrink)

The present book of proceedings includes chapters related to the areas of pure, applied and inter-disciplinary mathematics reflecting the potential applications in the domains of sciences and engineering. The main areas include algebra and its applications, analysis and approximation theory, cryptography, computational fluid dynamics, continuum mechanics and vibrations, differential equations and applications, graph theory, fuzzy mathematics and logic, numerical analysis, optimization and its applications, wave propagation, etc. The scientists, engineers, academicians and researchers working in the proposed areas of coding and (...) information theory, computational fluid dynamics, differential equations, fuzzy sets and systems, numerical analysis, optimization, vibrations, etc. looking for new insight and ideas in these areas will be benefitted by the contents of this book. In fact, it will be useful to a large class of readers interested in recent findings related to mathematical sciences and their applications to the diverse domains of knowledge. The book will be a fruitful contribution to all knowledge seekers and researchers in the concerned areas who are looking for new insight and ideas. As it consists of updated research articles on emerging areas of mathematical sciences and their applications, it will be a valued addition to the learning resource centres of various universities, industries, and research and development organizations across the globe. (shrink)

The Caraka Saṃhitā (ca. first century BCE–third century CE), the first classical Indian medical compendium, covers a wide variety of pharmacological and therapeutic treatment, while also sketching out a philosophical anthropology of the human subject who is the patient of the physicians for whom this text was composed. In this article, I outline some of the relevant aspects of this anthropology – in particular, its understanding of ‘mind’ and other elements that constitute the subject – before exploring two ways in (...) which it approaches ‘psychiatric’ disorder: one as ‘mental illness’ ( mānasa-roga), the other as ‘madness’ ( unmāda). I focus on two aspects of this approach. One concerns the moral relationship between the virtuous and the well life, or the moral and the medical dimensions of a patient’s subjectivity. The other is about the phenomenological relationship between the patient and the ecology within which the patient’s disturbance occurs. The aetiology of and responses to such disturbances helps us think more carefully about the very contours of subjectivity, about who we are and how we should understand ourselves. I locate this interpretation within a larger programme on the interpretation of the whole human being, which I have elsewhere called ‘ecological phenomenology’. (shrink)

Reading a passage in the Sanskrit Mahābhārata—the attempted disrobing of Princess Draupadī after her senior husband has gambled her away (after losing all his wealth, his brothers and himself)—I suggest that we see in her attitude and angry words an expression of contempt. I explore how contempt is a concept that is not thematized within Sanskrit aesthetics of emotions, but nonetheless is clearly articulated in the literature. Focusing on the significance of her gendered expression of anger and contempt, and the (...) positive acceptance of it in the text, I suggest that contempt can be understood as a transformative attitude in a woman (even a high-born one) towards iniquities in a patriarchal culture. (shrink)

Drawing on a rich variety of Indian texts across multiple traditions, including Vedanta, Buddhist, Yoga and Jain, this collection explores how emotional experience is framed, evoked and theorized in order to offer compelling insights into human subjectivity. Rather than approaching emotion through the prism of Western theory, a team of leading Indian philosophers showcase the unique literary texture, philosophical reflections and theoretical paradigms that classical Indian sources provide in their own right. From solitude in the Saundarananda and psychosomatic theories of (...) disease in the Yogavasistha to female lament in Greek, Sinhala Buddhist and Sanskrit epic tales, their chapters reveal the range and diversity of the phenomena encompassing the English term 'emotion'. In doing so, they contribute towards a more cosmopolitan, comparative and pluralistic conception of human experience. Adopting a broad phenomenological methodology, this handbook reframes debates on emotion within classical Indian thought and is an invaluable resource for researchers and students seeking to understand the field beyond the Western tradition. (shrink)

Liberalism and pluralism are seen as being in tension in liberal Western nation-states, while multiculturalism, as a policy of resource allocation to minority groups, has been the standard response to pluralization. This limits the pluralist potential of a constitutional liberalism. The fusion of a liberal theory of autonomous individuality with a pluralist theory of multiple belonging has to look beyond multicultural policy in order to enhance liberal commitments to citizens through pluralist provisions. An analysis of the Indian Constitution's Fundamental Rights, (...) as a normative document, shows that the citizen can be understood as an autonomous individual given identity through belonging to a plurality of groups. Consequently, rights are taken to accrue to all citizens equally as autonomous individuals, but also by virtue of their belonging to groups, with special provisions made available for vulnerable ones. Rights for a plurality of vulnerable groups should not be seen as illiberal additions but integral to the conception of liberalism. If such a view of citizenship were to be integrated into the liberal constitutions of irreversibly pluralizing Western democracies, then a pluralistic constitutional patriotism could be fostered amongst members of vulnerable groups, while demonstrating that standard liberal rights guarantee equal citizenship for all. (shrink)

The field of Science and Technology Studies has long critiqued the idea that there is such a thing as a universal and singular ""Science"" that exists independently of human society, interpretation, and action. But surprisingly little attention has been paid to the colonial contexts in which the scientific endeavor has been practiced and on which scientific principles have been built. In this important book, Amit Prasad seeks to rectify this erasure, demonstrating that problematic idealized imaginaries of science, scientists, and the (...) scientific realm can be traced back to the birth of ""modern science"" during European colonialism. Such visions of science and technology have undergirded the imagination of the West (and thus its others), constructing hierarchies of technological innovation and scientific value, but also unexpectedly leaving society vulnerable to contemporary threats of misinformation and conspiracy theories, as has been strikingly evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. Far from being an indictment of STS, this rigorous book seeks to highlight such concerns to make STS engage more carefully with issues of colonialism and thus to enable readers to understand the rapidly changing global topography of science and technology today, and into the future. (shrink)

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad offers illuminating new perspectives on contemporary phenomenological theories of body and subjectivity, based on studies of diverse classical Indian texts. He argues for a 'phenomenological ecology' of bodily subjectivity in health, gender, contemplation, and lovemaking.

Bruce Janz, Jessica Locke, and Cynthia Willett interact in this exchange with different aspects of Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad’s book Human Being, Bodily Being. Through “constructive inter-cultural thinking”, they seek to engage with Ram-Prasad’s “lower-case p” phenomenology, which exemplifies “how to think otherwise about the nature and role of bodiliness in human experience”. This exchange, which includes Ram-Prasad’s reply to their interventions, pushes the reader to reflect more about different aspects of bodiliness.

Classical Indian schools of philosophy seek to attain a supreme end to existence--liberation from the cycle of lives. This book looks at four conceptions of liberation and the roles of analytic inquiry and philosophical knowledge in its attainment. The central motivation of Indian philosophy--the quest for the Highest Good--is situated in the analytic philosophical activity of key thinkers.

Study on Indic philosophy and religion; with a special reference to Nepal.