Arguing that intellectual movements, such as deconstruction, postsecular theory, and political theology, have different implications for cultures and societies that live with the debilitating effects of past imperialisms, Arvind Mandair ...

The concept śabad (Word) is central to Sikh scripture, doctrine, philosophy and spiritual praxis. This lecture offers a postsecular interpretation of this important concept and examines the passage of śabad from premodern scriptural sources to its entanglement in contemporary "wars of scholarship".

Everything and every word about spirituality have already been said but the practical utility of spiritual wisdom in day to day life to achieve success and live a blissful life is lacking. Spiritual wisdom not only shows us the path of salvation and freedom but also helps us to figure out the solutions for every problem in all walks of human life and civilization. Spirituality is a well-defined, scientific way to get any goal in life whether it is for justified (...) worldly desires or to fulfil the urge of salvation with a blissful route. The book is an important read for the present generation, i.e. our youth as well as the persons those who want to touch the divinity within. Due to the universal nature of Spiritual Wisdom, it is bound to be on the shelves of the coming generation as spiritual science is not something that can be restricted to any one generation. The book itself contains the aura of mysticism and a touch of the great teaching taken from the scriptures. The book will teach how spiritual wisdom may change a person’s life. (shrink)

We normally function through the mind without knowing the mechanics of understanding. This book teaches us how to make thoughts and how to control once mind, so that we can live peaceful life and achieve the highest goal of life, i.e. self-realization. Book also deals with the fundamentals of life and spirituality. Book has written in a simple language so that most of the peoples will understand the real essence of the life. The author has discussed about the complex messages (...) of the Vedanta, in a thoughtful manner. The author discusses about Jiva, Jagat, Ishvara and Spiritual life in his book by referencing verses from the Bhagwat Gita, Vedanta and Shrimad Bhagwat Mahapuran in very simple language. The purpose of writing this book is to understand our intrinsic nature. Book is so enriched with the wisdom that everyone should read it at least once. (shrink)

Anti-corruption initiatives are critical tools in the fight against unethical behavior, selling transparency and integrity in both the public and commercial sectors. This study explores the efficacy of anti-corruption techniques on public trust in organizations. Using a dataset comprising 300 employees from a legal aid center, the research assesses the impact of diverse anti-corruption measures on Public Trust Score (PTS). Data turned into collected through surveys measuring the Transparency Index (TI), Accountability Index (AI), Effectiveness of Oversight Bodies (EOB), Public Awareness (...) Level (PAL), and Quality of Anti-Corruption Training (QACT). SPSS was employed for analysis, consisting of Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), Pearson correlation was used to assess the significance and direction of the correlation between each independent variable and the dependent variable, and Multiple Linear regressions (MLR) was used to assess the influence of numerous independent variables. Simultaneously at the dependent variable. The findings imply that more advantageous transparency, accountability, and powerful oversight significantly enhance public acceptance, while public recognition and training quality have a notable but lesser impact. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sikhism between Tradition and "Assemblage":Reflections on Arvind Mandair's Sikh PhilosophyAnanda Abeysekara (bio)Sikh Philosophy: Exploring Gurmat Concepts in a Decolonizing World. By Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022.My central concern in this essay is how to think about the relation between genealogy and tradition in Arvind Mandair's Sikh Philosophy: Exploring Gurmat Concepts in a Decolonizing World (London: Bloomsbury, 2022). I begin with a brief discussion of a lecture (...) titled "A Genealogy of Liberty" delivered by Quentin Skinner at the University of California, Berkeley in 2008, which he would give again, with minor changes, in 2015 at the University of Chicago and in 2017 at Stanford University. At the outset of the lecture, joining forces with Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, he says, "Here I am a Nietzschean, and it is reflected in my title"—contending that "concepts [like liberty] that have histories cannot have definitions." In giving a concise history of the rival "polemical" claims made by Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, Mill, Arendt, Taylor, and others about the concept of liberty, Skinner concludes that, contrary to what Anglo-American philosophy claims, there is not one "coherent way of thinking about liberty" in its contested genealogy. And "while each of these accounts is coherent in its own terms, you cannot combine them. This is genealogy. You can't get this to be the concept of liberty. You are going to have to make some choices, because they don't fit together. So what choice should you make? As to the answer, I leave that up to you" (Skinner 2016).The puzzle of how to think about such a genealogy was palpable in the questions from the audience that followed Skinner's lecture. Noteworthy was one question, about how the thinkers—for example from Hobbes to John Stuart Mill—in the history of the debate about liberty seem to "move around," their views seeming to "bleed into one another" (Skinner 2015). That is, isn't John Stuart Mill's view of liberty—as something that one can voluntarily renounce by internalizing the external views or customs—more or less the same as Hobbes' view of liberty as something free from external interference? And hence don't these competing views after all "fit together" within a single narrative? Ultimately, the concern here boils down to a question about the definition of liberty. [End Page 333]But what the presupposition in the question misses is that each of these positions—as Skinner carefully argues—is "ideological," "polemical," and "contested"; that is, these positions—even though Skinner does not say this explicitly—are marked by distinct forms of historical sensibility. That each of the historical positions, again as Skinner rightly argues, is "coherent" already grants that the sensibilities that define them within their specific conditions cannot be reproduced. That is, to extend Skinner's argument, these sensibilities cannot simply be "combined" within a seamless narrative because they presuppose relationships of power in which they have the force of intelligibility that they do in particular historical contexts. But the presumption about the meaning of a concept—for example the concept of "creativity" or "emptiness"—that can be readily and universally identified in a historical narrative is prevalent in other disciplines like Buddhist studies and South Asian studies, where, despite scholars using the term, genealogy remains poorly thought through (Abeysekara 2023; Walser 2018).1Largely absent in Skinner's genealogy is any discussion of the concept of "tradition" itself even though at times he alludes to "the tradition of liberty." This may not be a simple oversight on Skinner's part, but its very absence raises the question of whether liberalism itself is a discursive, embodied tradition in the ways a religious tradition works, as conceptualized by Talal Asad and others. Asad has described liberalism itself as a certain kind of "tradition" constituted by historical disputes (Asad 2009).2 And the broader implication of that argument is that, because it is a tradition animated by the very debates about what constitutes it, those who make claims about it are already situated within that tradition. And so it is unsound to speak of multiple traditions of liberty and, by extension, "multiple modernities... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An Appreciation of Arvind Mandair's Sikh Philosophy:Exploring Gurmat Concepts in a Decolonizing WorldJeffery D. Long (bio)"Sikhism," the Colonial Project, and Modernity1I do not use this adjective lightly, but in his brilliant volume Sikh Philosophy: Exploring Gurmat Concepts in a Decolonizing World (Bloomsbury, 2022) Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair goes a considerable distance toward liberating sikhī—known more widely in the academic world as Sikhism—from the conceptual constraints that have kept it (...) from engaging with and informing global issues. In so doing, he does a service not only to the Sikh community and to sikhī itself, but to the world, for there is indeed much in Sikh thought from which the wider human community can benefit. By liberating sikhī from the constraining concept of religion, Mandair facilitates a process by which persons of any background can engage with gurmat ideas—that is, ideas drawn from the system of thought based upon the teachings of the Gurus of the Sikh tradition—and learn from their wisdom.Mandair skillfully deconstructs the concept of religion, building upon earlier work in which he demonstrates the colonial functionalities of this concept.2 When, through colonial knowledge-production processes, sikhī came to be conceived as a religion, Sikh thought was relegated to the realm of theology. This was a relegation, not an elevation, because under the dominant paradigm of modernity, theology is seen as a discourse that is relevant only to a specific religious community. It is thus perceived as lacking the universality [End Page 353] that is taken to inhere in the discourses of philosophy or science. When combined with the colonial situation of Sikhs under British rule, this relegation of Sikh thought to the realm of theology becomes a way of exerting power over the community. As Mandair explains,Once theology had become the primary regime of cultural translation, Sikh thinking was inevitably tethered to the social and political project of religious identification which was required primarily to facilitate governance of cultural differences or heterogeneity that characterized the indigenous populations [of India]. By doing so, it effectively locked Sikh activity within the confines of identity politics.(p. 10)Integral to British colonial policy in India was a project of defining communities, primarily on the basis of religion, but also deploying concepts such as caste and tribe. Through these definitions, the identities of Indians could be essentialized, and policies applied to them in ways that facilitated British dominance over Indian society.3Much has been written about the ways in which language is used to promote ideologies that serve to advance the power interests of some groups of people over others.4 No less an ideological mechanism than the Oxford English Dictionary has been brought to bear in the process of constraining sikhī and depriving it of the universal relevance that it ought naturally to possess. In Mandair's words, "By defining 'Sikhism' as the beliefs and practices of Sikhs, or as an Indian monotheistic religion founded in fifteenth-century India, the OED turns the Sikh aspect into a cliché—a religious type (monotheism), an ethnic type tied to a geographical location (Punjabi/North India) and a historical type (medieval India)" (p. 11).The damage that has been wrought by the modern colonial concept of religion globally is, of course, not limited exclusively to the Sikh community. It has been integral to the construction of a secular order in which what is regarded as religious thought is, again, relegated to a parochial realm of relevance only to members of specific communities. It further serves to marginalize these same communities, whose discourses come to be seen as lacking the universality of secular thought, which is presented as objective truth. As Mandair continues,The purpose of creating the modern category of 'religion' was to help authorize and naturalize secular rationality as the dominant form of modern consciousness, and as the essential language of conventional thinking, or 'common sense.' It is precisely this common sense which persuades us of the apparent naturalness of oppositions such as religion versus politics or materiality versus ideality, to give two well-known examples.(p. 11)To these two examples, one could add the opposition of religion and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sikh Philosophy as a Philosophy-of-PracticeMonika Kirloskar-Steinbach (bio)Some recent publications on Indian philosophy argue that the colonial narrative about the philosophical traditions from the subcontinent was erroneous. It wrongly suggested that the erstwhile Brahmanic thought embodied by the darśanas was an exhaustive representation of philosophical activity on the subcontinent and that this activity came to a grinding halt with the onset of European modernity. In an attempt at rectifying this (...) story, one path proposed by philosopher Vrinda Dalmiya (Dalmiya 2016, p. 125) is to cognize and fix the "epistemophilic excesses" in the field, that is, the obsessive compulsion in conventional academic philosophy to engage in theory for theory's sake. In the study of Indian philosophy, this malady manifests as the practice of channeling philosophical analysis solely through a darśanic framing. This monofocal lens, however, is unable to reflect either the diversity of practices on the ground or values like intellectual freedom that drive some such practices.Arvind-Pal Mandair's Sikh Philosophy: Exploring Gurmat Concepts in a Decolonizing World (Bloomsbury, 2022), discussed here in this forum, speaks to these concerns and offers a possible way forward. Sikh Philosophy advocates a liminal perspective from which to engage with the set of philosophical practices that emanated on the subcontinent around the figure of Guru Nanak (1469–1539) and the teachings of the Sikh gurus (gurmat). In the first part of my response, I will bring into this conversation Mandair's philosophical orientation to ask whether and how he would contribute to that debate. In the second part, I will project the haumai—one concept doing much of the work in Sikh Philosophy—as one viable path that may be able to contribute to the correction of the epistemophilia currently afflicting a judicious study of world-philosophical traditions.In my limited understanding, Mandair's rendition of the haumai may serve as one component that could be implemented fruitfully in broadening the perspective on Indian philosophy. Mandair observes that a postcolonial sensibility demands a philosophical orientation that does not continue its proprietary attitude toward philosophical positions. I share his view. Instead of parading these positions as possessions that embellish one's academic finesse, they should be considered as ways of navigating life adequately. In doing so, however, the making of such navigational routes may profit from a deliberate reflection on them from different standpoints. [End Page 348]Halting Exclusivist Historiographical Trends in PhilosophyTwo recent handbooks on Indian philosophy reflect the growing awareness that changes in the field's self-understanding are imperative, should imperialist and colonial historiographies that affect this understanding be upturned. Jonardon Ganeri's editorial introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy—"Why Indian Philosophy? Why Now?"—argues that students of Indian philosophy should overcome the routinized fixation on the classical darśanas. In developing their accounts, they should factor in the "regionality, vernaculars, subaltern communities, [and] eccentrics" through which "scholarly networks, nodes of philosophical activity, transnational encounters, and contexts of philosophical invention" arose on the subcontinent (Ganeri 2017, p. 2). This broader approach would, in his view, not only be viable in halting the elitist and exclusivist historiography that was the default mode in the recent colonial past. In addition, it would be better equipped to grasp the richness of practices on the ground.Accordingly, his Handbook departs from the handbook genre on one core point: instead of delivering a supposedly comprehensive study of positions that would be indispensable to the reader to understand the intricacies of the field marked out as Indian philosophy, this Handbook chooses to narrate one multi-perspectival story about practices on the subcontinent that were philosophically motivated and are worthy of study today. It suggests through this move that there are other such possible stories that can be narrated. Relatedly, Purushottama Bilimoria and Amy Rayner's History of Indian Philosophy strives as well to make a case to go beyond the darśanic mold. It includes a variety of philosophical positions located on its peripheries. For example, Sikh philosophy, which notably is not included in the Ganeri volume, is incorporated here as a tradition that engaged darśanic practices. Balbinder Singh Bhogal, the author of... (shrink)

It is now standard to distinguish between two kinds of rationality: substantive rationality, which consists in holding attitudes that are substantively reasonable or justified, and structural rationality, which consists in holding attitudes that fit together in the right ways. What, if anything, unifies these two kinds of rationality? In this paper, I propose that norms of rationality arise because we are epistemically limited beings who cannot directly ensure the correctness of our attitudes. Substantive and structural rationality represent two different ways (...) of manifesting a fundamental commitment to getting things correct, given our epistemic limitations. Correspondingly, substantive and structural irrationality are distinct rational failures. Substantively irrational attitudes involve a failure to live up to the commitments that constitute those attitudes. Structurally irrational combinations of attitudes are constituted by inconsistent commitments, which guarantees that we will fail to live up to at least some of our commitments in holding these attitudes. (shrink)

In business ethics, there is a large body of literature focusing on the conditions, factors, and influences in the ethical decision-making processes. This work builds upon the past critical reviews by updating and extending the literature review found in Craft’s :221–259, 2013) study, extending her literature review to include a total of 141 articles. Since past reviews have focused on categorizing results based upon various independent variables, we instead synthesize and look at the trends of these based upon the four (...) ethical decision making categories: Awareness, Behavior, Judgment, and Intention. We focus on the moderation and mediation effects found within these studies and provide an in-depth analysis of future trends. Furthermore, we also highlight key statistical and methodological concerns, outline overarching trends, and directions of future research in empirical ethical decision making. (shrink)

Shamans, including medicine men, mediums, and the prophets of religious movements, recur across human societies. Shamanism also existed among nearly all documented hunter-gatherers, likely characterized the religious lives of many ancestral humans, and is often proposed by anthropologists to be the “first profession,” representing the first institutionalized division of labor beyond age and sex. In this article, I propose a cultural evolutionary theory to explain why shamanism consistently develops and, in particular, (1) why shamanic traditions exhibit recurrent features around the (...) world; (2) why shamanism professionalizes early, often in the absence of other specialization; and (3) how shifting social conditions affect the form or existence of shamanism. According to this theory, shamanism is a set of traditions developed through cultural evolution that adapts to people's intuitions to convince observers that a practitioner can influence otherwise unpredictable, significant events. The shaman does this by ostensibly transforming during initiation and trance, violating folk intuitions of humanness to assure group members that he or she can interact with the invisible forces that control uncertain outcomes. Entry requirements for becoming a shaman persist because the practitioner's credibility depends on his or her “transforming.” This contrasts with dealing with problems that have identifiable solutions (such as building a canoe), in which credibility hinges on showing results and outsiders can invade the jurisdiction by producing the outcome. Shamanism is an ancient human institution that recurs because of the capacity of cultural evolution to produce practices adapted to innate psychological tendencies. (shrink)

A very common but untested assumption is that potential children would consent to be exposed to the harms of existence in order to experience its benefits. And so, would-be parents might appeal to the following view: Procreation is all-things-considered permissible, as it is morally acceptable for one to knowingly harm an unconsenting patient if one has good reasons for assuming her hypothetical consent—and procreators can indeed reasonably rely on some notion of hypothetical consent. I argue that this view is in (...) error. My argument appeals to a consent-based version of anti-natalism advanced by Seana Valentine Shiffrin. Anti-natalism is the view that it is always wrong to bring people into existence. While, like Shiffrin, I stop short of advocating a thoroughgoing anti-natalism, I nevertheless argue that procreators cannot appeal to hypothetical consent to justify exposing children to the harms of existence. I end by suggesting a more promising route by which this justification might be achieved. (shrink)

Rules regulating social behavior raise challenging questions about cultural evolution in part because they frequently confer group-level benefits. Current multilevel selection theories contend that between-group processes interact with within-group processes to produce norms and institutions, but within-group processes have remained underspecified, leading to a recent emphasis on cultural group selection as the primary driver of cultural design. Here we present the self-interested enforcement (SIE) hypothesis, which proposes that the design of rules importantly reflects the relative enforcement capacities of competing parties. (...) We show that, in addition to explaining patterns in cultural change and stability, SIE can account for the emergence of much group-functional culture. We outline how this process can stifle or accelerate cultural group selection, depending on various social conditions. Self-interested enforcement has important bearings on the emergence, stability, and change of rules. (shrink)

This article explores the gender dynamics of ‘causing or allowing a child to die’, contrary to the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004, section 5. This offence was intended to allow for prosecution where a child had been killed and it was uncertain who had killed him/her, but also to allow for prosecution of non-violent defendants who failed to protect him/her. More women than men have been charged and convicted of this offence signifying a reversal of usual patterns of (...) prosecution and conviction. This analysis interrogates how section 5 criminalises women who have experienced domestic abuse. Drawing on a case observation, reported cases and media reports of cases, I suggest this offence derives from and perpetuates patriarchal constructs of motherhood. Grounded in a feminist approach building on women’s concrete experiences of law, I conclude that section 5 should be amended so that it is only used where it cannot be ascertained which defendant actively harmed a child. (shrink)

I consider cases of multifetal pregnancy in which one fetus with a fatal birth defect poses a risk to the survival of another healthy fetus to show that the substance view anti-abortion position leads to a contradiction. In cases of complicated multifetal pregnancy, if intervention by selective abortion to terminate the defective fetus is not performed, both fetuses will die due to the conditions created by the defective fetus’s fatal birth defect. Because abortion is wrong on the anti-abortion position, and (...) a moderate anti-abortion position cannot make an exception for selective abortion in cases of complicated multifetal pregnancy if it operates on the substance view, choosing selective abortion must be wrong, so one must let both fetuses die. However, the substance view anti-abortion position must take letting both fetuses die to be wrong, otherwise it will undermine itself as an anti-abortion position. Further, the substance view provides grounds for why letting fetuses die would be wrong anyway. Thus, the substance view anti-abortion position must take both having an abortion and not having an abortion to be wrong, which is a contradiction. Therefore, cases of complicated multifetal pregnancy show that the substance view anti-abortion position is false. (shrink)

This article probes the relative absence of religion within discussions of intersectionality, and begins to address this absence by bringing intersectionality studies into conversation with another significant field within feminist theory: the study of religious women's agency. Although feminist literatures on intersectionality and religious women's agency have garnered a great deal of scholarly attention, these two bodies of work have rarely been engaged together. After surveying both fields, I argue that research on religious women's agency not only exposes an ambiguity (...) at the heart of intersectionality between identity and oppression, but also challenges several aspects of intersectionality studies, especially as recent theorists increasingly turn away from identity politics in favor of a structural critique of power. These aspects of intersectionality include its often unsituated critique of power, as well as its reliance on a negatively defined consensus on anti-oppression. (shrink)

Business ethics has been described as a prime academic growth industry. This paper reports the findings of a survey aimed at establishing the status of ethics in the curricula of Canadian Schools of Management and Administrative Studies. It was found that twenty-three of the forty-two responding schools offer courses in business ethics and that they offer a total of twenty-five ethics courses, twenty of which are offered as electives. Forty-two percent of the schools not offering a course in business ethics (...) plan to offer such a course by 1989. This means that by 1989 seventy-four percent of the responding schools should have a business ethics component in their curricula. (shrink)

The sympathetic plot—featuring a goal-directed protagonist who confronts obstacles, overcomes them, and wins rewards—is ubiquitous. Here, I propose that it recurs because it entertains, engaging two sets of psychological mechanisms. First, it triggers mechanisms for learning about obstacles and how to overcome them. It builds interest by confronting a protagonist with a problem and induces satisfaction when the problem is solved. Second, it evokes sympathetic joy. It establishes the protagonist as an ideal cooperative partner pursuing a goal, appealing to mechanisms (...) for helping. When the protagonist succeeds, they receive rewards, and audiences feel sympathetic joy, an emotion normally triggered when beneficiaries triumph. The capacities underlying the sympathetic plot evolved for learning and cooperation before being co-opted for entertainment. (shrink)

The catch 22 situation in psychiatry is that for precise diagnostic categories/criteria, we need precise investigative tests, and for precise investigative tests, we need precise diagnostic criteria/categories; and precision in both diagnostics and investigative tests is nonexistent at present. The effort to establish clarity often results in a fresh maze of evidence. In finding the way forward, it is tempting to abandon the scientific method, but that is not possible, since we deal with real human psychopathology, not just concepts to (...) speculate over. Search for clear-cut definitions/diagnostic criteria in psychiatry must be relentless. There is a greater need to be ruthless and blunt in this, rather than being accommodative of diverse opinions. Investigative tests - psychological, serum, CSF, or neuroimaging - are only corroborative at present; they need to become definitive. Medicalisation appears most prominent in psychiatry; so, diagnostic proliferation and fuzziness appear inevitable. And yet, the established diagnostic entities need to forward greater and conclusive precision. Also, the need for clarity and precision must outweigh pandering to and mollifying diverse interests, moreso in the upcoming revision of diagnostic manuals. This is specially because the DSM-5, being an Association manual, may need to accommodate powerful member lobbies; and ICD-11 may similarly need to cater to diverse country lobbies. Finding precise biological correlates of psychiatric phenomena, whether through neuroimaging, molecular neurobiology and/or neurogenomics, is the right way forward. It is in the 1.5-kg structure in the cranium that all secrets of psychiatric conditions lie. Social forces, behavioural modification, psychosocial restructuring, study of intrapsychic processes, and philosophical insights are not to be discounted, but they are supplementary to the primary goal - studying and deciphering those brain processes that result in psychiatric malfunction. Experimental breakthroughs, both in psychiatric aetiology and therapeutics, will come mainly from biology and its adjunct, psychopharmacology; while supplementary and complementary breakthroughs will come from the psychosocial, cognitive and behavioural approaches; the support base will come from phenomenology, epidemiology, nosology and diagnostics; while insights and leads can hopefully come from many fields, especially the psychosocial, the behavioural, the cognitive and the philosophical. Major energies must now be marshalled towards finding biomarkers and deciphering the precise phenotype-genotype-endophenotype axis of psychiatric disorders. Energies also need to be focussed on unravelling those critical processes in the brain that tip the scale towards psychiatric disorders. At how those critical processes are set into motion by forces de novo, in utero, in the genes and their expression, by the environment's psychopathological social forces - stress, peer pressure, poverty, deprivation, alienation, malnutrition, discrimination of various types (caste, gender, race, etc.), mass conflicts (war, terror attacks, etc.), disasters (natural and man-made), religious/ideological fascism - or social institutions like marriage, family, work place, political governance, etc. Ultimately, we must decipher how the brain goes into malfunction when such varied forces impinge on it, which precise cortical areas and neuronal cellular and molecular processes are involved in such malfunction and its manifestation, as also which of these are involved when malfunction ceases and health is restored, and the psychosocial processes and institutions which aid such health restoration, as also those which promote well-being and help in primary prevention. Emphasis on the brain and its intimate neurological and molecular mechanisms will not impinge on, or nullify, importance of the 'mind,' wherein subtle and gross brain functions in the form of behaviour, thought and emotions in all their ramifications will continue to be the focus of psychological, cognitive, sociological, psychopharmacological, behavioural and philosophical research. Progress in brain research must move in tandem with progress in 'mind' research. (shrink)

If there is one question that has perplexed the best minds in every society, it is how to raise the individuals from their present state to a higher state of existence and perfection? The answers have been tried using different formulations in history: religious, scientific and political. The common factor in all these historical formulations was that they were designed in opposition to each other and therefore left many things unaccounted. The aim of this paper is to explore the idea (...) of self-perfection as a continuous streak of infinite vertical ascension. The paper has elaborated the idea of ‘Verticality’, propounded by Peter Sloterdijk for looking in to the domains of self-perfection and the stages of vertical ascension. For our purpose, we have relied on the example of discipline of Management that has progressively theorized about different aspects and stages of existence. (shrink)

I offer a response to an objection to my account of the moral difference between fetuses and newborns, an account that seeks to address an analogy between abortion and infanticide which is based on the apparent equality of moral value of fetuses and newborns.

Background: Poverty and social deprivation have adverse effects on health outcomes and place a significant burden on healthcare systems. There are some actions that can be taken to tackle them from within healthcare institutions, but clinicians who seek to make frontline services more responsive to the social determinants of health and the social context of people’s lives can face a range of ethical challenges. We summarise and consider a case in which clinicians introduced a poverty screening initiative into paediatric practice (...) using the discourse and methodology of healthcare quality improvement. -/- Discussion: Whilst suggesting that interventions like the PSI are a potentially valuable extension of clinical roles, which take advantage of the unique affordances of clinical settings, we argue that there is a tendency for such settings to continuously reproduce a narrower set of norms. We illustrate how the framing of an initiative as QI can help legitimate and secure funding for practical efforts to help address social ends from within clinical service, but also how it can constrain and disguise the value of this work. A combination of methodological emphases within QI and managerialism within healthcare institutions leads to the prioritisation, often implicitly, of a limited set of aims and governing values for healthcare. This can act as an obstacle to a genuine broadening of the clinical agenda, reinforcing norms of clinical practice that effectively push poverty ‘off limits.’ We set out the ethical dilemmas facing clinicians who seek to navigate this landscape in order to address poverty and the social determinants of health. -/- Conclusions: We suggest that reclaiming QI as a more deliberative tool that is sensitive to these ethical dilemmas can enable managers, clinicians and patients to pursue health-related values and ends, broadly conceived, as part of an expansive range of social and personal goods. (shrink)

The study of the temporal structure of events in natural language is of prime importance in linguistics. Though there has been recent progress on formal theories of events, these theories do not address certain syntactic and semantic properties peculiar to languages such as Hindi. This paper concentrates on properties related to perfectivity. It motivates a small number of semantic features for events and their objects, such as whether an object exists independently of an event, whether it is totally affected by (...) the event, and so on. It then formalizes these features. It also shows how they can be formalized in an algebraic framework and applied in a categorial grammar to derive the properties of verbal and nominal predicates. The result is an integration of descriptive semantics with algebraic theories of objects and events. (shrink)

The demarcation of the private and public life leads to role of the state in private life. Many individuals have been the unflinching voice for moral dissent. In the western philosophy, debate on private morality and public life was instigated by Attorney General’s Commission Report which was submitted in 1986 and recommended no blanket ban on homosexuality and prostitution. However, a contemporary liberalist, Ronald Dworkin, castigates this Report. He argues that the report has an antagonistic approach because of its permissive (...) attitude towards pornography and the same time hospitability towards the enforcement hypothesis, which holds a preventive attitude towards pornography. In this paper, I analyse the feminists’ discourse of pornography connected with Dworkin and the Committee Report and adds more possibilities that put Dworkin’s arguments closer to the Report. Therefore, in this paper, I argue that Commission Report and Dworkin’s strategy towards pornography embodying as two sides of the same coin, and enforcement strategy is in the far away footing implies antagonistic approach. (shrink)

This paper investigates how specific notions of gender and ethnicity are integrated into diversity discourses presented on 241 top European company websites. Large European companies increasingly disclose equality and diversity policies in statements on websites. Such statements may be used to promote an ethical image of the company in terms of how well it manages diversity and guards against discrimination. In this paper, we argue that diversity statement discourses are important as they play a key part in socially constructing how (...) diversity should be regarded in the company by minority and majority groups, as well as indicating corporate values to external stakeholders. Sometimes, the notions of gender or ethnic diversity are positioned as a liability in need of protection, whilst in others, as a source of competitive advantage. We find evidence of use of discursive tools such as problematisation, rationalisation, fixation, reframing and naturalisation of the notions of gender and ethnic diversity, reinforced by use of symbols, such as statistics, photographs, membership badges and awards. Few statements directly associate gender and ethnic diversity with enhanced corporate performance. We found that diversity statements sometimes appear to reinforce existing business stereotypes of women and people from ethnic minorities, and in a few discourses, create new ones, particularly evident in photographs illustrating the diversity web pages. (shrink)

This article provides empirical evidence of the social context and moral reasoning embedded within a parents’ decision to participate in autism genetics research. Based on in-depth interviews of parents who donated their family’s blood and medical information to an autism genetic database, three narratives of participation are analyzed, including the altruistic parent, the obligated parent, and the diagnostic parent. Although parents in this study were not generally concerned with bioethical principles such as autonomy and the issues of informed consent and/or (...) privacy and confidentiality of genetic information, a critical analysis reveals contextual bioethics embedded within these different narratives. These include the negotiations of responsibility that parents confront in biomedical research, the misguided hope and expectations parents place in genomic science, and the structural barriers of obtaining an autism diagnosis and educational services. Based on these findings, this article demonstrates the limits of a principle-based approach to bioethics and the emergent forms of biological citizenship that takes into account the social situations of people’s lives and the moral reasoning they negotiate when participating in autism genetic research. (shrink)

_The first part called the Preamble tackles: (a) the issues of silence and speech, and life and disease; (b) whether we need to know some or all of the truth, and how are exact science and philosophical reason related; (c) the phenomenon of Why, How, and What; (d) how are mind and brain related; (e) what is robust eclecticism, empirical/scientific enquiry, replicability/refutability, and the role of diagnosis and medical model in psychiatry; (f) bioethics and the four principles of beneficence, non-malfeasance, (...) autonomy, and justice; (g) the four concepts of disease, illness, sickness, and disorder; how confusion is confounded by these concepts but clarity is imperative if we want to make sense out of them; and how psychiatry is an interim medical discipline. The second part called The Issues deals with: (a) the concepts of nature and nurture; the biological and the psychosocial; and psychiatric disease and brain pathophysiology; (b) biology, Freud and the reinvention of psychiatry; (c) critics of psychiatry, mind-body problem and paradigm shifts in psychiatry; (d) the biological, the psychoanalytic, the psychosocial and the cognitive; (e) the issues of clarity, reductionism, and integration; (f) what are the fool-proof criteria, which are false leads, and what is the need for questioning assumptions in psychiatry. The third part is called Psychiatric Disorder, Psychiatric Ethics, and Psychiatry Connected Disciplines. It includes topics like (a) psychiatric disorder, mental health, and mental phenomena; (b) issues in psychiatric ethics; (c) social psychiatry, liaison psychiatry, psychosomatic medicine, forensic psychiatry, and neuropsychiatry. The fourth part is called Antipsychiatry, Blunting Creativity, etc. It includes topics like (a) antipsychiatry revisited; (b) basic arguments of antipsychiatry, Szasz, etc.; (c) psychiatric classification and value judgment; (d) conformity, labeling, and blunting creativity. The fifth part is called The Role of Philosophy, Religion, and Spirituality in Psychiatry. It includes topics like (a) relevance of philosophy to psychiatry; (b) psychiatry, religion, spirituality, and culture; (c) ancient Indian concepts and contemporary psychiatry; (d) Indian holism and Western reductionism; (e) science, humanism, and the nomothetic-idiographic orientation. The last part, called Final Goal, talks of the need for a grand unified theory. The whole discussion is put in the form of refutable points._. (shrink)

Recruiting nurses from other countries is a long-standing practice. In recent years many countries in the developed world have more frequently recruited nurses from the developing world, causing an imbalance in the health services in often already impoverished countries. Despite guidelines and promises by developed countries that the practice should cease, it has largely failed to do so. A consortium of authors from countries that have experienced significant nurse poaching consider the ethical aspects behind this continuing practice.

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

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

A journal editor recently apologised for publishing a 2010 paper in which authors designated an enzyme as New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase-1 (NDM-1) and its related gene bla_NDM-1 after a city, New Delhi. This name had raised an outcry in India, with health authorities, media and medical practitioners demanding New Delhi be dropped from the name. The name was actually first given in another 2009 paper, whose corresponding author remains the same as the 2010 paper. There is a tradition of eponymous names (...) in science. But those found derogatory to races, groups, cities, and countries have been changed. For example, Mongolism was changed to Down's syndrome; Australia antigen to HBsAg; Mexican Swine flu to H1N1; GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency) and 4H-Disease (Haitians, Homosexuals, Haemophiliacs and Heroin Users Disease) to AIDS. It is necessary that NDM-1 also be changed to a name based on scientific characteristics. NDM-1 must be changed to PCM (plasmid-encoding carbapenem-resistant metallo-β-lactamase). It is also necessary to review the tradition of naming organisms, diseases, genes, etc. after cities, countries and races. Often, such names giving amounts to names calling. It needs to be discarded by scientists in all new names giving from now on. Geographical and racial names giving must be replaced by scientific names giving. Journal editors must ensure that such scientific names giving is laid down as standard guideline in paper submissions. All such names still in currency need to be phased out by replacing them with names based on scientific characteristics, or in honour of their pioneering scientist/s or institutions. The lead author of the above 2010 paper has said he was not consulted about the final draft and did not agree with the conclusions of the paper. To ensure that corresponding authors do not ride roughshod over co-authors, and lead and other authors do not backtrack on papers, editors must ensure written concurrence of all authors, especially the lead author, to the final draft of a paper and include this in their guidelines for paper submissions. (shrink)

The adaptation of the curriculum to incorporate cutting-edge technologies and human ethical values necessitates a careful, deliberate approach. A technological transition, pivotal for the future of education, is fraught with challenges but also with real chances for better human self-understanding. To appropriately understand the complexities and significance of this digital shift, Stadio Higher Education conducted a survey (STADIO SV Survey) to capture the voices of students on technology relevant to their social, learning, and teaching environments. After consolidating fundamental points as (...) the methodology and the reliability of the survey, we proposed a descriptive analysis and a substantial study of the findings provided. Literature review and discussion of such important concepts as: choice of the technology, the nature of access, the computing skills needed, communication, contact and successful engagement permit, in a nutshell, the articulation of some very useful closing recommendations. (shrink)