This paper presents a human–robot interaction framework where a robot can infer implicit affective cues of a human and respond to them appropriately. Affective cues are inferred by the robot in real-time from physiological signals. A robot-based basketball game is designed where a robotic “coach” monitors the human participant’s anxiety to dynamically reconfigure game parameters to allow skill improvement while maintaining desired anxiety levels. The results of the above-mentioned anxiety-based sessions are compared with performance-based sessions where in the latter sessions, (...) the game is adapted only according to the player’s performance. It was observed that 79% of the participants showed lower anxiety during anxiety-based session than in the performance-based session, 64% showed a greater improvement in performance after the anxiety-based session and 71% of the participants reported greater overall satisfaction during the anxiety-based sessions. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that the impact of real-time affective communication between a robot and a human has been demonstrated experimentally. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein's interest in the writings of Rabindranath Tagore, is recognized among scholars worldwide though little has been written on his fascination with Tagore's poetry and symbolic plays. In Language, Limits, and Beyond, Priyambada Sarkar explores Tagore and Wittgenstein's philosophical arguments on the concept of 'threshold of language and meaning', highlighting the systematic connections between Tagore's canon and Wittgenstein's early works. Situatingher study in the early 1900s, when Tagore's poetry had just become available in Europe, Sarkar finds similarities (...) between Tagore's and Wittgenstein's exploration of the limits of language. She argues that Wittgenstein's early philosophy can be better understood when juxtaposed with Tagore.Drawing parallels between the worlds of philosophy and poetry, Sarkar identifies the point of convergence of their two philosophies in the realm of language, tracing how they reach surprisingly similar conclusions through entirely different paths of inquiry. Sarkar finally claims that such important points of contact will help one to arrange the pieces of the Tractarian jigsaw puzzle in a manner where all the pieces of logic, language, world, and the mystical will fall into place and form acoherent picture. (shrink)

Foreward by Pramod K. Nayar -- Prologue -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- The dys-abled players of Samuel Beckett's Endgame -- The circumcised body of Franz Kafka's select letters -- 'Connoisseurship ... of disease' and Thomas Mann's Death in Venice -- 'Undiscovered countries' with Virginia Woolf's On being ill -- 'Connect nothing with nothing' in T.S. Eliot's The wasteland -- Epilogue -- Pathography -- Index.

Many have claimed that epistemic rationality sometimes requires us to have imprecise credal states (i.e. credal states representable only by sets of credence functions) rather than precise ones (i.e. credal states representable by single credence functions). Some writers have recently argued that this claim conflicts with accuracy-centered epistemology, i.e., the project of justifying epistemic norms by appealing solely to the overall accuracy of the doxastic states they recommend. But these arguments are far from decisive. In this essay, we prove some (...) new results, which show that there is little hope for reconciling the rationality of credal imprecision with accuracy-centered epistemology. (shrink)

In this article, I cast doubt on an apparent truism, namely, that if evidence is available for gathering and use at a negligible cost, then it’s always instrumentally rational for us to gather that evidence and use it for making decisions. Call this ‘value of information’ (VOI). I show that VOI conflicts with two other plausible theses. The first is the view that an agent’s evidence can entail non-trivial propositions about the external world. The second is the view that epistemic (...) rationality requires us to update our credences by conditionalization. These two theses, given some plausible assumptions, make room for rationally biased inquiries where VOI fails. I go on to argue that this is bad news for defenders of VOI. (shrink)

BackgroundStudies on different methods to supplement the traditional informed consent process have generated conflicting results. This study was designed to evaluate whether participants who received group counseling prior to administration of informed consent understood the key components of the study and the consent better than those who received individual counseling, based on the hypothesis that group counseling would foster discussion among potential participants and enhance their understanding of the informed consent.MethodsParents of children participating in a trial of nutritional supplementation were (...) randomized to receive either group counseling or individual counseling prior to administration of the informed consent. To assess the participant's comprehension, a structured questionnaire was administered approximately 48-72 hours afterwards by interviewers who were blinded to the allocation group of the respondents.ResultsA total of 128 parents were recruited and follow up was established with 118 (90.2%) for the study. All respondents were aware of their child's participation in a research study and the details of sample collection. However, their understanding of study purpose, randomization and withdrawal was poor. There was no difference in comprehension of key elements of the informed consent between the intervention and control arm.ConclusionsThe results suggest that the group counseling might not influence the overall comprehension of the informed consent process. Further research is required to devise better ways of improving participants' understanding of randomization in clinical trials.Trial RegistrationClinical Trial Registry - India (CTRI): CTRI/2009/091/000612. (shrink)

An important question in epistemology is whether the KK principle is true, i.e., whether an agent who knows that p is also thereby in a position to know that she knows that p. We explain how a “transparency” account of self-knowledge, which maintains that we learn about our attitudes towards a proposition by reflecting not on ourselves but rather on that very proposition, supports an affirmative answer. In particular, we show that such an account allows us to reconcile a version (...) of the KK principle with an “externalist” or “reliabilist” conception of knowledge commonly thought to make that principle particularly problematic. (shrink)

The first in-depth reference to the field that combines scientific knowledge with philosophical inquiry, this encyclopedia brings together a team of leading scholars to provide nearly 150 entries on the essential concepts in the philosophy of science. The areas covered include biology, chemistry, epistemology and metaphysics, physics, psychology and mind, the social sciences, and key figures in the combined studies of science and philosophy. (Midwest).

ObjectiveThis paper explores the interrelation among the concepts of identity, individuality and indiscernibilty, primarily from the standpoint of contemporary western analytic ontology and logic.MethodI review, compare and evaluate the classical and the alternative approaches to identity. In this regard, I focus on the issue whether these purportedly alternative approaches do really provide us with alternative conceptions of identity, or they are considering some other forms of equivalence relations weaker than the relation of identity. Arguments for and against the Principles of (...) Indiscernibility of Identicals and Identity of Indiscernibles are delineated to unravel the connection between identity and indiscernibility. Various attempts to provide the definition of identity in terms of indiscernibility have also been evaluated.FindingsI argue that it is a verbal issue whether we use the term ‘identity’, when analysed in terms of indiscernibility, or ‘congruence’, but the underlying metaphysical issues are not simple. If identity is analysed in terms of indiscernibility, stipulation of one’s philosophical understanding of property and possession of properties in the concerned logic and ontology should be made in clear terms to avoid confusion. But there can also be ontological and logical frameworks where numerical identity and difference are not qualitatively explicable.ConclusionA pluralist stance, at least at the phenomenal level, is proposed to be maintained with regard to the explanation of the phenomenon of identity. This pluralist stance has also been proposed as a plausible metatheoretical framework of metaphysical debates. (shrink)

According to Bayesian orthodoxy, an agent should update---or at least should plan to update---her credences by conditionalization. Some have defended this claim by means of a diachronic Dutch book argument. They say: an agent who does not plan to update her credences by conditionalization is vulnerable (by her own lights) to a diachronic Dutch book, i.e., a sequence of bets which, when accepted, guarantee loss of utility. Here, I show that this argument is in tension with evidence externalism, i.e., the (...) view that an agent's evidence can entail non-trivial propositions about the external world. I argue that this tension casts doubt on the idea that diachronic Dutch books can be used to justify or vindicate updating plans. (shrink)

This paper argues for a different logical form for complex demonstratives, given that the quantificational account is correct. In itself that is controversial, but two aspects will be assumed. Firstly, there are arguments to believe that complex demonstratives have quantificational uses. Specifically, there are syntactic arguments. Secondly, a uniform semantics is preferable to a semantics of ambiguity. Given this, the proposed logical forms for complex demonstratives that are prevalent do not respect a fundamental property of quantifiers: permutation invariance. The reason (...) for this is the attempt to retain, in the logical forms proposed, the strong intuitions of reference that uses of complex demonstratives display. The paper suggests that the directly referential intuitions surrounding complex demonstratives cannot be taken to be part of the semantics of the expression. There appears to be no need to do so, either. The paper defends the new logical form against various objections. (shrink)

This essay explores a problem for Nyāya epistemologists. It concerns the notion of pramā. Roughly speaking, a pramā is a conscious mental event of knowledge-acquisition, i.e., a conscious experience or thought in undergoing which an agent learns or comes to know something. Call any event of this sort a knowledge-event. The problem is this. On the one hand, many Naiyāyikas accept what I will call the Nyāya Definition of Knowledge, the view that a conscious experience or thought is a knowledge-event (...) just in case it is true and non-recollective. On the other hand, they are also committed to what I shall call Nyāya Infallibilism, the thesis that every knowledge-event is produced by causes that couldn’t have given rise to an error. These two commitments seem to conflict with each other in cases of epistemic luck, i.e., cases where an agent arrives a true judgement accidentally or as a matter of luck. While the Nyāya Definition of Knowledge seems to predict that these judgements are knowledge-events, Nyāya Infallibilism seems to entail that they aren’t. In this essay, I show that Gaṅgeśa Upādhyāya, the 14th century Naiyāyika, solves this problem by adopting what I call epistemic localism, the view that upstream causal factors play no epistemically significant role in the production of knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction Classical Molecular Biology Genomics and Post‐Genomics Proteomics Towards a Systems Biology? Philosophical Implications Conclusions: An Invitation References.

Recently, several epistemologists have defended an attractive principle of epistemic rationality, which we shall call Ur-Prior Conditionalization. In this essay, I ask whether we can justify this principle by appealing to the epistemic goal of accuracy. I argue that any such accuracy-based argument will be in tension with Evidence Externalism, i.e., the view that agent's evidence may entail non-trivial propositions about the external world. This is because any such argument will crucially require the assumption that, independently of all empirical evidence, (...) it is rational for an agent to be certain that her evidence will always include truths, and that she will always have perfect introspective access to her own evidence. This assumption is in tension with Evidence Externalism. I go on to suggest that even if we don't accept Evidence Externalism, the prospects for any accuracy-based justification for Ur-Prior Conditionalization are bleak. (shrink)

When Putnam wrote Reason, Truth and History, he thought that whatever the truth was, it could not entirely outrun justification. He moved away from this epistemic conception of truth—of truth as idealized rational acceptability—and his later view appears to recognize the fact that there are truths that may well be recognition transcendent. Wright (J Philos 97(6):335–364, 2000) has correctly observed that this change in Putnam’s views raises the question of how his current natural realism is different from metaphysical realism, a (...) view that Putnam has always been at pains to distance himself from. After all, metaphysical realism is the admission of the fact that truths can be recognition transcendent. In this paper, I will reflect on the distinction between metaphysical realism and natural realism, hoping to lay out certain aspects of Putnam’s later views on truth which underwrite this crucial distinction. (shrink)

This paper is about a tension between two theses. The first is Value of Evidence: roughly, the thesis that it is always rational for an agent to gather and use cost‐free evidence for making decisions. The second is Rationality of Imprecision: the thesis that an agent can be rationally required to adopt doxastic states that are imprecise, i.e., not representable by a single credence function. While others have noticed this tension, I offer a new diagnosis of it. I show that (...) it arises when an agent with an imprecise doxastic state engages in an unreflective inquiry, an inquiry where they revise their beliefs using an updating rule that doesn't satisfy a weak reflection principle. In such an unreflective inquiry, certain synchronic norms of instrumental rationality can make it instrumentally irrational for an agent to gather and use cost‐free evidence. I then go on to propose a diachronic norm of instrumental rationality that preserves Value of Evidence in unreflective inquiries. This, I suggest, may help us reconcile this thesis with Rationality of Imprecision. (shrink)

Phrases like "That man" are called complex demonstrative phrases. They are usually considered to be directly referential in nature. There are many arguments to suggest that such phrases are not directly referential, but are quantificational. This work examines the philosophical debate over the semantic status of complex demonstratives at length, arriving at the conclusion that the quantificational view is right. A new logical form is also suggested for complex demonstratives.

This article introduces a dilemma regarding conceptual schemes and suggests a solution. The dilemma is about whether there are conceptual schemes or not. There are good reasons for maintaining either position. There must be conceptual schemes because theory is underdetermined by evidence. And there cannot be conceptual schemes because Davidson has given an almost unassailable argument against it. I resolve the dilemma by arguing that Davidson’s argument is based on a false dilemma generated by too strong a principle of charity. (...) This makes space for conceptual schemes without sacrificing the intelligibility of any. (shrink)

This dissertation is about the meaning of phrases like "That man" or "This bag". These phrases are described as Complex Demonstratives. There is a difference of opinion regarding whether these phrases are directly referential or quantificational. I have weighed the arguments regarding this debate in the dissertation. I have concluded that there are cogent arguments to believe that such phrases are quantificational. However, one cannot retain the insights of the directly referential account inside the quantificational account. That is a creditable (...) move, but the move abandons a crucial property of quantifiers: permutation invariance. Since that is the case, I have suggested that given the evidence at hand, and the examination of the evidence in the dissertation, we may settle for a simpler theory that does not accommodate the intuitions of the direct referentialist. Those intuitions have to be accounted for through the intentions of a speaker when she utters phrases using complex demonstratives. (shrink)

Cancer is fast becoming an alarming cause of human death. However, it has been reported that if the disease is detected at an early stage, diagnosed, treated appropriately, the patient has better chances of survival long life. Machine learning technique with feature-selection contributes greatly to the detecting of cancer, because an efficient feature-selection method can remove redundant features. In this paper, a Fuzzy Preference-Based Rough Set (FPRS) blended with Support Vector Machine (SVM) has been applied in order to predict cancer (...) biomarkers for biological and gene expression datasets. Biomarkers are determined by deploying three models of FPRS, namely, Fuzzy Upward Consistency (FUC), Fuzzy Downward Consistency (FLC), and Fuzzy Global Consistency (FGC). The efficiency of the three models with SVM on five datasets is exhibited, and the biomarkers that have been identified from FUC models have been reported. (shrink)

By now it has become commonplace to note that the early Carnap was strongly influenced by Kant and the neo-Kantianism of his day.1 As early as 1977 Haack noted some striking similarities between the Aufbau and the first Critique; since then, Haack’s observation has been underscored by documenting the explicit role of the neo-Kantians in Carnap’s early education and intellectual development.2 Whether or not Carnap in the Aufbau was at all interested in traditional empiricism, or even strongly influenced by Russell, (...) remains debatable.3 However, a decisive early influence of Kant cannot be persuasively denied. Nevertheless, Kant and the neo-Kantians do not comprise the whole story. An equally important influence on Carnap in Der Raum, though perhaps slightly less so in the Aufbau, was Husserl.4 This paper begins the project of tracing the precise extent and nature of that influence.KeywordsPhysical SpaceFormal SpaceLogical EmpiricismVienna CircleLogical SyntaxThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves. (shrink)

In Sanskrit philosophy, the closest analogue of intuition is pratibhā. Here, I will focus on the theory of pratibhā offered by the Sanskrit grammarian Bhartṛhari (fifth century CE). On this account, states of pratibhā play two distinct psychological roles. First, they serve as sources of linguistic understanding. They are the states by means of which linguistically competent agents effortlessly understand the meaning of novel sentences. Second, states of pratibhā serve as sources of practical knowledge. On the basis of such states, (...) both human and non-human agents unreflectively know which actions they should perform under which circumstances. Given these two roles of pratibhā, modern commentators have often claimed that states of pratibhā, as understood by Bhartṛhari, are intuitions. In this article, I will reconstruct Bhartṛhari's view and to explore its consequences, I will argue that, if Bhartṛhari’s theory of pratibhā is right, then a form of human exceptionalism – which makes rationality a unique trait of human beings – becomes difficult to maintain. (shrink)

In this essay, my aim is to explain Vātsyāyana’s solution to a problem that arises for his theory of liberation. For him and most Nyāya philosophers after him, liberation consists in the absolute cessation of pain. Since this requires freedom from embodied existence, it also results in the absolute cessation of pleasure. How, then, can agents like us be rationally motivated to seek liberation? Vātsyāyana’s solution depends on what I will call the Pain Principle, i.e., the principle that we should (...) treat all aspects of our embodied existence as pain. If we were to follow this advice, we would come to apply the label of pain to all aspects of our embodied existence, including pleasure. This would undermine our attachment to our own embodied existence. I show that this fits with Vātsyāyana’s general theory of motivation. According to this theory, by manipulating the labels using which we think about the world and ourselves, we can induce radical shifts in our patterns of motivation. (shrink)

Sumit Sarkar, one of the leading Indian historians of his generation, participated in the Indian-British Subaltern Studies Collective that established new standards in the historiography of colonialism in the 1980’s. In this Interview, Déborah Cohen and Urs Lindner ask him about the achievements and oversights of the Subaltern Studies project, the prospects of global history, Marx’s eurocentrism and the problem of religion.

In classical South Asia, most philosophers thought that the self (if it exists at all) is what the first-person pronoun ‘I’ stands for. It is something that persists through time, undergoes conscious thoughts and experiences, and exercises control over actions. The Buddhists accepted the ‘no self’ thesis: they denied that such a self is substantially real. This gave rise to a puzzle for these Buddhists. If there is nothing substantially real that ‘I’ stands for, what are we talking about when (...) we speak of ourselves? In this paper, I present one Buddhist answer to this question, an answer that emerges from the work of the Abhidharma thinker Vasubandhu (4th to 5th century CE). (shrink)

In A Confection of Refutation (Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya), the twelfth-century philosopher and poet Śrīharṣa addresses a version of Meno’s paradox. This version of the paradox was well known in first millennium South Asia through the writings of two earlier Sanskrit philosophers, Śabarasvāmin (4th–5th century ce) and Śaṃkara (8th century ce). Both these thinkers proposed a solution to the paradox. I show how Śrīharṣa rejects this solution, and splits the old paradox into two new ones: the paradox of triviality and the paradox of (...) incoherence. I argue that these paradoxes are connected to Śrīharṣa’s broader pessimism about the possibility of successful rational inquiry into certain philosophical questions. (shrink)

This paper questions a few assumptions of Gaṅgeśa Upādhyāya’s theory of ordinary verbal cognition (laukika-śābdabodha). The meaning relation (vṛtti) is of two kinds: śakti (which gives us the primary referent of a word) and lakṣaṇā (which yields the secondary referent). For Gaṅgeśa, the ground (bīja) of lakṣaṇā is a sort of inexplicability (anupapatti) pertaining to the composition (anvaya) of word-meanings. In this connection, one notices that the case of lakṣaṇā is quite similar to that of one variety of postulation, namely, (...) śrutārtāthāpatti, where the subject hears only a part of a sentence and immediately grasps the words that are needed to render the sentential meaning complete. Unless he does that, sentential meaning, i.e., the composition (anvaya) of word-meanings shall suffer from the same inexplicability that characterizes instances of lakṣaṇā. In fact, in the ‘Śaktivāda’ section of Tattvacintāmaṇi, Gaṅgeśa himself draws a parallel between the cognition of sentential meaning in a śrutārthāpatti-like case and the cognition of sentential meaning in an instance of lakṣaṇā. However, Gaṇgesa himself treats Śrutārthāpatti as a piece of inferential cognition. If there is no fundamental difference between cases of śrutārthāpatti and cases of lakṣaṇā, then the cognition of sentential meaning in instances of lakṣaṇā must also be inferential in essence. In that case, we must admit, against Gaṅgeśa’s view, that such cognition of sentential meaning cannot be accommodated within the framework of verbal cognition (śābdabodha). Therefore, I conclude that some revision is needed in Gaṅgeśa’s theory of verbal cognition with respect to lakṣaṇā. (shrink)

This paper questions a few assumptions of Gaṅgeśa Upādhyāya’s theory of ordinary verbal cognition (laukika-śābdabodha). The meaning relation (vṛtti) is of two kinds: śakti (which gives us the primary referent of a word) and lakṣaṇā (which yields the secondary referent). For Gaṅgeśa, the ground (bīja) of lakṣaṇā is a sort of inexplicability (anupapatti) pertaining to the composition (anvaya) of word-meanings. In this connection, one notices that the case of lakṣaṇā is quite similar to that of one variety of postulation, namely, (...) śrutārtāthāpatti, where the subject hears only a part of a sentence and immediately grasps the words that are needed to render the sentential meaning complete. Unless he does that, sentential meaning, i.e., the composition (anvaya) of word-meanings shall suffer from the same inexplicability that characterizes instances of lakṣaṇā. In fact, in the ‘Śaktivāda’ section of Tattvacintāmaṇi, Gaṅgeśa himself draws a parallel between the cognition of sentential meaning in a śrutārthāpatti-like case and the cognition of sentential meaning in an instance of lakṣaṇā. However, Gaṇgesa himself treats Śrutārthāpatti as a piece of inferential cognition. If there is no fundamental difference between cases of śrutārthāpatti and cases of lakṣaṇā, then the cognition of sentential meaning in instances of lakṣaṇā must also be inferential in essence. In that case, we must admit, against Gaṅgeśa’s view, that such cognition of sentential meaning cannot be accommodated within the framework of verbal cognition (śābdabodha). Therefore, I conclude that some revision is needed in Gaṅgeśa’s theory of verbal cognition with respect to lakṣaṇā. (shrink)

The search for definitions is ubiquitous in Sanskrit philosophy. In many texts across traditions, we find philosophers presenting their theories by laying down definitions of key theoretical categories, by testing those definitions, and by refuting competing definitions of the same theoretical categories. Call this the method of definitions. The aim of this essay is to explore a challenge that arises for this method: the paradox of definitions. It arises from the claim that the method of definitions is either (i) redundant (...) because it does not provide us any knowledge that we did not already possess, or (ii) impossible to successfully pursue because it leads to an infinite regress. Neither of these alternatives should be acceptable to the defender of this method. To focus our discussion, I will show how this challenge arose for—and was arguably resolved by—early Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika thinkers active in the first millennium CE and at the very beginning of the second millennium. In response to the paradox of definitions, these Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika thinkers claimed that the purpose of a definition is to remove either metaphysical ignorance about the distinction between theoretically significant kinds or kind-membership, or metalinguistic ignorance about the meaning or the application-conditions of theoretically significant terms. I will show how this discussion helps us to ward off certain misconceptions about the method of definitions in Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika. (shrink)

Universals are properties that are shared by multiple objects. In classical South Asia, Brahmanical thinkers from Vyākaraṇa, Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, and Mīmāṃsā text traditions were realists about universals, while most Buddhists were nominalists. In this paper, my aim is to reconstruct the early Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika theory of universals, with special emphasis on the arguments of the Nyāya philosopher Uddyotakara (6th century CE) against a Buddhist strand of resemblance nominalism. I show that Uddyotakara's contribution to this debate is twofold. First, he is possibly (...) the first Naiyāyika to adopt a sparse theory of universals, a theory according to which it is necessary to posit only those universals which explain how objects resemble each other in the most fundamental or irreducible respects. On the other hand, he offers a few arguments for realism, which are explicitly motivated by a causal constraint on intentionality. (shrink)

This book provides a richly interdisciplinary assessment of the thought and work of Bryan Norton, one of most innovative and influential environmental philosophers of the past thirty years. In landmark works such as Toward Unity Among Environmentalists and Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management, Norton charted a new and highly productive course for an applied environmental philosophy, one fully engaged with the natural and social sciences as well as the management professions. A Sustainable Philosophy gathers together a distinguished group (...) of scholars and professionals from a wide array of fields to engage Norton’s work and its legacy for our shared environmental future. A study in the power of intellectual legacy and the real-world influence of philosophy, the book will be of great interest scholars and students in environmental philosophy, public policy and management, and environmental and sustainability studies. By considering the value and impact of Norton’s body of work it will also chart a course for the next generation of pragmatic environmental philosophers and sustainability scholars grappling with questions of environmental value, knowledge, and practice in a rapidly changing world. (shrink)