We argue that providing cumulative risk as an estimate of the uncertainty in dynamically changing risky environments can help decision-makers meet mission-critical goals. Specifically, we constructed a simplified aviation-like weather decision-making task incorporating Next-Generation Radar images of convective weather. NEXRAD radar images provide information about geographically referenced precipitation. NEXRAD radar images are used by both pilots and laypeople to support decision-making about the level of risk posed by future weather-hazard movements. Using NEXRAD, people and professionals have to infer the uncertainty (...) in the meteorological information to understand current hazards and extrapolate future conditions. Recent advancements in meteorology modeling afford the possibility of providing uncertainty information concerning hazardous weather for the current flight. Although there are systematic biases that plague people’s use of uncertainty information, there is evidence that presenting forecast uncertainty can improve weather-related decision-making. The current study augments NEXRAD by providing flight-path risk, referred to as the Risk Situational Awareness Tool. RSAT provides the probability that a route will come within 20 NMI radius of hazardous weather within the next 45 min of flight. The study evaluates four NEXRAD displays integrated with RSAT, providing varying levels of support. The “no” support condition has no RSAT. The “baseline” support condition employs an RSAT whose accuracy is consistent with current capability in meteorological modeling. The “moderate” support condition applies an RSAT whose accuracy is likely at the top of what is achievable in meteorology in the near future. The “high” support condition provides a level of support that is likely unachievable in an aviation weather decision-making context without considerable technological innovation. The results indicate that the operators relied on the RSAT and improved their performance as a consequence. We discuss the implications of the findings for the safe introduction of probabilistic tools in future general aviation cockpits and other dynamic decision-making contexts. Moreover, we discuss how the results contribute to research in the fields of dynamic risk and uncertainty, risk situation awareness, cumulative risk, and risk communication. (shrink)

Funerals are a reflective practice to bid farewell to the departed soul. Different religions, cultural traditions, rituals, and social beliefs guide how funeral practices take place. Family and friends gather together to support each other in times of grief. However, during the coronavirus pandemic, the way funerals are taking place is affected by the country's rules and region to avoid the spread of infection. The present study explores the media portrayal of public sentiments over funerals. In particular, the present study (...) tried to identify linguistic dimensions associated with lexical components of social processes, affective processes, fear, and disgust. An exhaustive search of newspaper coverage of funeral and related articles was made for a specific corona period. After an initial screening for the details and language used, a total of 46 newspaper articles on funerals were finalized for the analysis. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software was used to determine the association between linguistic dimensions of function words and words related to social and affective processes, as presented in the newspaper articles. Sentiment Analysis and Cognition Engine (SEANCE) was applied for the analysis of sentiment, social cognition, and social order. Bayesian correlation analysis and regression revealed positive and significant associations between function words and affective processes, between pronouns and social processes, and between negative adjectives and psychological processes of fear and disgust. Also, significant negative associations were found between polarity nouns and psychological processes of fear and disgust and between polarity verbs and psychological processes of fear and disgust. Bayes factor 10 provides strong evidence in favor of the study hypotheses. The media is influenced by the prevailing sentiments in society and reflects their perception of the current social order and beliefs. The findings provide a glimpse into the prevailing sentiment of society through the lens of media coverage. These understandings are expected to enhance our observations of how people express their feelings over the loss of their loved ones and help mental health professionals develop their therapeutic protocols to treat the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-affected population. (shrink)

Exhaustive explanation of the chapter ten of Bhagavadgītā, Hindu philosophical classic.

Many real-world optimization problems usually require a large number of conflicting objectives to be optimized simultaneously to obtain solution. It has been observed that these kinds of many-objective optimization problems often pose several performance challenges to the traditional multi-objective optimization algorithms. To address the performance issue caused by the different types of MaOPs, recently, a variety of many-objective particle swarm optimization has been proposed. However, external archive maintenance and selection of leaders for designing the MaOPSO to real-world MaOPs are still (...) challenging issues. This work presents a MaOPSO based on entropy-driven global best selection strategy to solve the many-objective software package restructuring problem. EMPSO makes use of the entropy and quality indicator for the selection of global best particle. To evaluate the performance of the proposed approach, we applied it over the five MaOSPR problems. We compared it with eight variants of MaOPSO, which are based on eight different global best selection strategies. The results indicate that the proposed EMPSO is competitive with respect to the existing global best selection strategies based on variants of MaOPSO approaches. (shrink)

Technologies and human values both have important bearing on human life and conditions. Unfortunately, the dialogue between them has remained inadequate, at best. While the discourse on human values recognizes various kinds and layers of values, including values that are universally relevant across societies and cultures, research on the interface between values and technology has predominantly focused on technology’s interactions with society-specific values. This article is an attempt to broaden the scope of this research by specifically taking the case of (...) cremation technologies. Numerous societal, religious and universal values interplay with each other in matters related to death and the dead. Unlike other technologies, an individual can ‘use’ cremation technology only once, that too with limited control over his/her choice. Our empirical research finds that a complex interaction of multiple layers of values shapes the form and trajectory of cremation technology. Tracking the debate on the adoption of... (shrink)

The Ethics of Governance: Moral Limits of Policy Decisions offers a toolbox drawn from normative ethics which finds applications in public governance, primarily focusing on policy making and executive action. It includes ethical concepts and principles culled from different philosophical traditions, ranging from more familiar Western theories to non-Western ethical perspectives, thereby providing a truly global, decolonized and expanded normative lens on issues of governance. The book takes a unique and original approach; it demonstrates the use of the ethical toolbox (...) in the context of actual examples of governance challenges. Taking three major case studies each representing an aspect of human-human and/or human-nature and/or human-animal relationship, the book attempts to show the significance of public practical reasoning in policy decisions with the aim of arriving at reasonable responses. Acknowledging the challenges that policy makers often face, the book highlights the fact that policy making is hardly an exercise yielding a black-or-white solution; rather it involves finding the most reasonable normative outcome in a given situation, especially employing an expanded understanding of values including well-being, sustainability, interdependence and community. This effort that helps bridge the gap between ethical theorists and policy practitioners exemplifies the necessary role of ‘engaged philosophy’ in public governance. In the major case studies, Boxes offer facts and figures along with pertinent ethical questions that have been raised and discussed. Aiming to aid the engagement of a diverse audience including non-philosophy readers, each chapter also includes Boxes containing examples, shorter case studies, at-a-glance charts, and tables with comprehensive ethical tools for a quick recap. (shrink)

Exhaustive explanation of the Yogasūtra of Patañjali, work on Yoga philosophy; includes Sanskrit text with Gujarati translation.

This conceptual review seeks to reframe the view of academic integrity as something to be enforced to an academic skill that needs to be developed. The authors highlight how practices within academia create an environment where feelings of inadequacy thrive, leading to behaviours of unintentional academic misconduct. Importantly, this review includes practical suggestions to help educators and higher education institutions support doctoral students’ academic integrity skills. In particular, the authors highlight the importance of explicit academic integrity instruction, support for the (...) development of academic literacy skills, and changes in supervisory practices that encourage student and supervisor reflexivity. Therefore, this review argues that, through the use of these practical strategies, academia can become a space where a culture of academic integrity can flourish. (shrink)

The article offers a close reading of the famous upanişadic story of Indra, Virocana and Prajāpati from the eighth chapter of the Chāndogya-Upanişad versus Śankara’s bhāşya, with special reference to the notions of suşupti and turīya. That Śankara is not always loyal to the Upanişadic texts is a well-known fact. That the Upanişads are (too) often read through Śan-kara’s Advaitic eyes is also known. The following lines will not merely illustrate the gap between text and commentary but will also reveal (...) an unexpected Upanişadic depiction of ‘dreamless sleep’ and ‘transcendental consciousness’. Suşupti is described here as ‘one step too far’, as a ‘break’ or discontinuity in one’s consciousness; whereas turīya is depicted positively, and surprisingly even in wordly terms. Unlike the third state of consciousness in which there is no ‘world’ nor ‘me’, and which is described through Indra’s character as ‘total destruction’ (vināśa); in turīya, the world ‘comes back’, or rather the ‘renouncer’ returns to the world. Sankara’s position, as far as the story under discussion is concerned, is radically different. For him, the Upanişadic story illustrates the continuity of consciousness in all its states. For him, the identification with merely one of the consciousness-states is an error (adhyāsa) which causes suffering. Consciousness prevails even in suşupti, and turīya has nothing to do with ‘coming back to the world’, since there is nowhere to come back from or to. Turīya, as seen by the Advaitin, consists of all the other states of consciousness together, or as K. C. Bhattacharyya puts it, ‘It is not only a stage among stages; it is the truth of the other stages’. (shrink)

In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, one of the principal Upaniṣads, we find a venerable and famous story where the god Prajāpati separately instructs three groups of people (gods, humans, and demons) simply by uttering the syllable “Da.” In this paper, our concern is not with ethics but theories of meaning and interpretation: How can all divergent interpretations of a single expression be correct, and, indeed, endorsed by the speaker? As an exercise in cross-cultural philosophical reflection, we consider some of the leading (...) modern theories of meaning—those of Grice, Quine, and Davidson—in order to see if the Upaniṣadic story receives a natural home in any of them. We conclude that the story is best understood through Grice’s theory of meaning rather than Quine’s or Davidson’s. (shrink)

In this article, I study the concept of brahman—the exhaustive formulation of truth about the world—in the early Upaniṣads. Based on close reading of two stories appearing in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka, the Kauṣītaki and the Chāndogya Upaniṣads, I reconstruct two competing theories about brahman, namely the “theory of puruṣa ” and the “theory of ātman.” While the theory of puruṣa refers to the creation of human and divine beings as a result of duplication of the anthropomorphic form of the universe, the (...) theory of ātman traces the phenomenal reality in its various forms to the inner, formless self “made of consciousness” capable of creating and projecting forms out of itself. These two theories are discussed in the dialogue between Gārgya Bālāki and Ajātaśatru, the king of Kāśi appearing in two versions in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and the Kauṣītaki Upaniṣads. Bālāki’s theory of puruṣa is further revised and modified in the light of Ajātaśatru’s criticism in the story from the Chāndogya Upaniṣads, in which the god Prajāpati teaches Indra and Virocana about the self. (shrink)

We present a unified vision of human knowledge, the external world and ourselves in the frame of an overall unity of Everything. Two main sources of knowledge are considered to this goal: an admittedly reductionist version of Modern Science and a few key elements of Oriental Philosophy. Our view is based on an analogy between the fundamental unity of Vedic ontology and the Grand Unification scheme of Particle Physics traced along the evolution of the Universe. Our key statement is that (...) these two sources of knowledge describe the same ontological story of separation, from an original One down to the multiplicity of the phenomenological world. We further substantiate this vision by drawing an analogy between the Residue of the Vedic sacrifice and the post-Big-Bang cosmological Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry. We also discuss a Big-Bang analogy between the postulated field of Inflationary Cosmology (the Inflaton) and the Vedic dissolution-decomposition of the cosmic progenitor Prajapati – whose body, according to Brahmanas texts, provides the material substrate of which the Universe is built. (shrink)

Whereas the Upanishads contain much which is, strictly speaking, of little interest to the historian of Indian thought, the Pre-Upanishadic texts are not completely devoid of passages which are of special importance for anyone who endeavours to trace the origin and oldest form of the main texts of classical Indian philosophy. Too often the difference between Upanishads and Pre-Upanishadic literature has been exaggerated ; too often the philosophical importance of the ritualistic speculations contained in the Brahmanas has been undervalued ; (...) too often these texts have been neglected by the compilers of handbooks. One of those points which have not always received due attention concerns the theoretic foundation of the belief in the possibility of gaining the victory over death and of the efforts to realize this ambition. One of the most important problems in which the Indians have always been interested is the relation between the One and the Many, between this phenomenal world and its source and ground. Already in the Rgveda opinions differ : it has been a divine architect who made the phenomenal world ; it has been an anonymous primeval deity who became a golden germ from which a demiurge was born ; the world has arisen from the impersonal One who desired to create the world, etc. In the course of time these creators and ideas of the original One fused into the great figure of Prajapati, „the Lord of Creatures”. This God, who occupies a central position in the Brdhmawa-texts originally was what he was to remain in popular belief : the deity presiding over biological creation. In the ritualistic speculations of the authors of the Brahmanas he is the Creator, the Father of gods and anti-gods, the origin of creation. In the beginning Prajapati was alone, he was ,all this’, he was the universe in ,concentrated’ and unmanifested form. By way of emanation and self-differentiation he became the manifested universe, including the creatures. After this creative activity he is empty and exhausted, because he has ,entered the universe' or rather transformed himself into the universe. His strength, force and health can however be recovered and restored by means of rites. The world and the creatures which emanated from Prajapati were not perfect ; they were a discontinuum, disintegrated, in the power of death. In order to make life possible and to make the world habitable Prajdpati instituted rites. Prajapati is in the Brahmanas identified with the highest and most general categories ; he is the year, i.e. the complete cycle of time comprising the past and the future, totality and completeness. The year, viewed as an integral structure is the fundamental basis of all that happens. Being also the rite, the sacral act, Prajapati is on the other hand the earthly counterpart of the great cosmic drama. On these two identifications the ritualistic system of these authors is constructed. Among these authorities Sandilya. occupies a prominent place. The mundane events oscillating between the poles of birth and death, of genesis and decay, rites are needed to reintegrate what has become decomposed. They are however also to restore the original unity and totality, to co-ordinate the non-co-ordinated phenomena, to reconstruct Prajapati, to restore his original oneness. The rites reduce, temporarily it is true and with regard to the individual who has them performed, the phenomenal multiplicity to a reintegrated totality, in which the diversity of Prajapati's emanation has been destroyed, and the original unity and oneness has been restored. This theory underlies the structure of the great Fire-altar , by which the sacrificer identifies himself with Prajapati whose original unity is restored. By performing this elaborate ritual the personality of the sacrificer was transformed into a new and divine existence, which was no longer subject to the imperfections proper to this world. That is to say : the sacrificer acquires ,immortality' , he transcends the limits of phenomenal time, he becomes sarva, i.e. safe-andsound, whole. Prajapati-the year will not destroy the man who identifies himself with the totality, with Prajapati-the year, and who has acquired an insight into the meaning of this identification ; that man overcomes disintegration and discontinuity, he gains the victory over death, that is to say : he attains to a sound and complete condition. In the course of time the personal Prajapati and the impersonal Brahman are identified. In the early Upanishads the latter becomes the great fundamental principle. These works resume on the one hand ancient speculations a part of which has been preserved in the Rg- and Atharvavedas, and utilize, on the other hand, the ritualistic theories of the Brdhmawas. The tendency of their authors is however to dissociate themselves from ritualism. Emphasizing the quest for the salvation and spiritual welfare of the individual they go into the problem of the ,Soul' , that is the ,self' or the very core of the personality, which is essentially different from all phenomenal plurality. The hitman is identified with the Punira, the primeval man out of whom the universe arose. It follows that the Atrmn is also cosmic. According to Udddlaka Arum it is the subtle essence of all that exists. All the important potencies in the universe are said to be its manifestations. However, in these works . Htman and Brahman tend to fuse and the great teacher Ydjwavalkya concluded to their being identical. Ordinary men do not understand this identity, but the few who are able to arrive at this highly important insight gain the victory over the imperfections and contingencies of empirical existence. They experience the ecstatic and unanalysable condition of unity, the undifferentiated Plenum or Totality, the ,All'. They know that they are truly Brahman or Sarvam. Now, it is most important to attain to this condition, which implies the victory over death, before one is to die the worldly death. The man who dies without having escaped death will die again and again in the hereafter. Whereas the ritualists attempt to protect themselves from this much feared ,repeated death' by means of rites, especially by the construction of the Fire-altar, the teachers whose words are recorded in the early Upanishads ascribed the delivering power to the esoteric knowledge of the ,under lying theory', to the knowledge of the ritual-cosmic interrelations : the man who knows the relevant speculations will be released. This belief in the redeeming power of the rites and the ,theory' on which they are based was also of special importance with regard to the development of the Karman-doctrine. Thus ritual and spiritual identification with the One which is the Totality, the Primeval Being, the Creator, the Atman enables man by experiencing a transformation to conquer phenomenal time and death. (shrink)