This essay reads John Locke’s Two Treatises through its nonhuman animal presences, especially the emblematic figures of cattle and “noxious creatures” like “lyons,” “tygers,” and wolves. It argues that the real ground of Lockean human equality is an ongoing practice of subjugating nonhuman animals, and not any attribute of the human species as such. More specifically, the Lockean social compact founded on this equality relies on a “dominion covenant,” an existential “agreement” in which God lends the power of dominion to (...) man and any threats to this order require punishment. This dynamic enables violence toward humans, in the name of their humanity, if they do not properly exert their power of dominion. Critics have connected Locke’s theory of property to indigenous dispossession and his theory of punishment to carceral systems; both processes, I argue, intimately rely on the dominion covenant. Lockean racism is the fulfillment of, and not a deviation from, his account of human equality. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhich emotion regulation strategy one uses in a given context can have profound affective, cognitive, and social consequences. It is therefore important to understand the determinants of emotion regulation choice. Many prior studies have examined person-specific, internal determinants of emotion regulation choice. Recently, it has become clear that external variables that are properties of the stimulus can also influence emotion regulation choice. In the present research, we consider whether reappraisal affordances, defined as the opportunities for re-interpretation of a stimulus that (...) are inherent in that stimulus, can shape individuals’ emotion regulation choices. We show that reappraisal affordances have stability across people and across time, and are confounded with emotional intensity for a standardised set of picture stimuli. Since emotional intensity has been shown to drive emotion regulation choice, we construct a context in which emotional intensity is separable from r... (shrink)

How does one give voice to the unspeakable, inhuman violence that shapes the present, and what remains of humanity in its wake? Adriana Cavarero offers an answer that roots human speech in embodied vulnerability, in contrast to philosophical emphases on disembodied rationality. In the face of what she calls horrorism, which puts humans in proximity to animality, she calls for resuscitating vocality, and therefore humanity, from loss. This article reads Kafka’s short story “A Report to an Academy” – which structurally (...) resembles a slave narrative and concerns a kidnapped ape who learns to speak – to extend Cavarero’s emphasis on vulnerability while challenging her humanism. In Kafka, modern horror’s locus is not animality but the abstract human, and it projects the unstable distinction between voice and noise onto blackened humans and nonhuman animals. (shrink)

We review Side Effects, a 2013 film involving bioethics, pharmaceuticals, and financial conspiracies. After the main character Emily unsuccessfully attempts suicide, she begins receiving care from a psychiatrist, Dr. Banks. Following numerous events, she is placed on a fictional antidepressant, Ablixa, which leads her to suffer from sleepwalking. During an episode of sleepwalking she commits a serious crime. The film poses an interesting dilemma: How responsible would the physician be in this instance? We analyze this question by applying numerous ethical (...) principles. (shrink)

Plotinus was a Neoplatonist philosopher, his work posthumously published by Porphyry and divided into six books, nine tractates each, called the Enneads. This book investigates Plotinian "emanation," its laws of poiesis and the roles of nature, matter, logos, and contemplation.

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 99-110, April 2022. Researchers often disagree as to whether emotions are largely consistent across people and over time, or whether they are variable. They also disagree as to whether emotions are initiated by appraisals, or whether they may be initiated in diverse ways. We draw upon Parallel-Distributed-Processing to offer an algorithmic account in which features of an emotion instance are bi-directionally connected to each other via conjunction units. We propose that such indirect connections (...) may be innate as well as learned. These ideas lead to the development of the Interactive Activation and Competition framework for Emotion which allows us to specify when emotions are consistent and when they are variable, as well as when they are appraisal-led and when they are input-agnostic. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 116-120, April 2022. To make progress related to long-standing questions related to the nature of emotion, we offer the Interactive Activation and Competition framework for Emotion. The IAC-E is not another conventional theory of emotion. Rather, it offers a neural-network-based, algorithmic account of how emotion instances and categories arise. Our approach suggests that there need not be a contradiction between instances of the same emotion being sometimes consistent and sometimes variable. Similarly, there need (...) not be a contradiction between observations of homogeneity and heterogeneity within emotion categories. (shrink)

Social media is the preferred communication platform for today’s youth, yet little is known of how online intergender communication is shaped by social identity norms. Drawing from the Social Identity and Deindividuation Effects approach, we argue that through depersonalization, online interactions are marked by the salience of social identities and identity performance conforming to perceived norms of behavior. We specifically look at discursive terms and their meaning-making as a strategic performance of gender in uncontrolled social media interactions. We examined a (...) corpus of 442 comments from selected public Indian Facebook pages in two phases over a span of 1 year. Thematic discourse analysis revealed established and emerging discursive strategies within the major themes on feminism and antifeminism, men’s rights, intersectional feminism, and sexual behavior. These meaningful terms are used to modulate identity performance in a heavily contested space, reflecting both consolidation as well as mobilization functions, as proposed by SIDE. The findings highlight that intergender communication on social media is both dependent on existing offline norms, while challenging the same to create new discourses of gender. (shrink)

In contrast to bilaterian animals, non‐bilaterian mitochondrial genomes contain atypical genes, often attributed to horizontal gene transfer (HGT) as an ad hoc explanation. Although prevalent in plants, HGT into animal mitochondrial genomes is rare, lacking suitable explanatory models for their occurrence. HGT of the mismatch DNA repair gene (mtMutS) from giant viruses to octocoral (soft corals and their kin) mitochondrial genomes provides a model for how barriers to HGT to animal mitochondria may be overcome. A review of the available literature (...) suggests that this HGT was mediated by an alveolate endosymbiont infected with a lysogenic phycodnavirus that enabled insertion of the homing endonuclease containing mtMutS into octocoral mitochondrial genomes. We posit that homing endonuclease domains and similar selfish elements play a crucial role in such inter‐domain gene transfers. Understanding the role of selfish genetic elements in HGT has the potential to aid development of tools for manipulating animal mitochondrial DNA. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Ahead of Print. To make progress related to long-standing questions related to the nature of emotion, we offer the Interactive Activation and Competition framework for Emotion. The IAC-E is not another conventional theory of emotion. Rather, it offers a neural-network-based, algorithmic account of how emotion instances and categories arise. Our approach suggests that there need not be a contradiction between instances of the same emotion being sometimes consistent and sometimes variable. Similarly, there need not be a contradiction between (...) observations of homogeneity and heterogeneity within emotion categories. (shrink)

The 2010 Commonwealth Games was Delhi's and India's biggest sporting event ever. In the immediate aftermath of the Games, this paper sets out to analyse the story of the Games' legacy- its politics, economic impact and to what extent was it successful in transforming Delhi into a global city and India into a sporting force to reckon with. Having already documented the history and politics of the Commonwealth Games with a focus on Delhi, , this paper is an extension in (...) trying to place Delhi 2010 in perspective, understand its long term meaning and explain its lasting legacy. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the ethical underpinnings to the anthropological analysis of age and reproductive decline in the ‘management’ of infertility, by suggesting that assisted reproductive technologies ‘use’ age and reproductive decline to further endanger women’s bodies by subjecting it to disaggregation into parts that do not belong to them anymore. Here, the category of age becomes a malleable concept to manipulate women seeking fertility management. In ethnographic findings from two Indian ART clinics, amongst women aged between 20 and (...) 35 years visiting an IVF/art clinic in Hyderabad city in South India, and women above 50 years of age visiting an IVF/art clinic in Hisar in North India—reproductive bodies are similarly disaggregated. In case of younger women, the treatment is fixated on rescuing eggs that may be in ‘decline’, and in case of older women, the aim is to engineer a viable pregnancy. Thus, the constant focus on eggs and wombs in infertility treatment creates a body that is not only not whole but also completely without agency. Age becomes a category that has rhetorical value to ‘push’ or persuade women into particular forms of fertility management through infertility medicine. I undertake a problematization of the egg and the uterus through the identification of the recurring motif of the menstrual cycle within IVF treatment to suggest that bodily holism is not part of ART discourse that unethically thrives on promoting technological intrusions to promote its use and normalization. (shrink)

To make progress related to long-standing questions related to the nature of emotion, we offer the Interactive Activation and Competition framework for Emotion. The IAC-E is not another con...

Emotion regulation choices are known to be profoundly consequential across affective, cognitive, and social domains. Prior studies have identified two important external factors of emotion regulati...

Deep neural networks (DNNs) have had extraordinary successes in classifying photographic images of objects and are often described as the best models of biological vision. This conclusion is largely based on three sets of findings: (1) DNNs are more accurate than any other model in classifying images taken from various datasets, (2) DNNs do the best job in predicting the pattern of human errors in classifying objects taken from various behavioral datasets, and (3) DNNs do the best job in predicting (...) brain signals in response to images taken from various brain datasets (e.g., single cell responses or fMRI data). However, these behavioral and brain datasets do not test hypotheses regarding what features are contributing to good predictions and we show that the predictions may be mediated by DNNs that share little overlap with biological vision. More problematically, we show that DNNs account for almost no results from psychological research. This contradicts the common claim that DNNs are good, let alone the best, models of human object recognition. We argue that theorists interested in developing biologically plausible models of human vision need to direct their attention to explaining psychological findings. More generally, theorists need to build models that explain the results of experiments that manipulate independent variables designed to test hypotheses rather than compete on making the best predictions. We conclude by briefly summarizing various promising modeling approaches that focus on psychological data. (shrink)

The ‘deontic orientation’ thesis—that is, the claim that ancient Indian legal theory is orientated or focussed towards duty to the exclusion of other jural operators—features prominently in the discourse of ancient Indian law. In contrast, contemporary legal systems tend to employ a variety of other jural operators also, including right, liberty, power, and so forth. Theorists like Wesley Hohfeld even assert that these operators are elemental, and hence not reducible to other operators. This disparity may be addressed from various evaluational (...) and conceptual standpoints. I address instead a more basic question: is the disparity real? Does a scrutiny of legal treatises factually validate the deontic orientation thesis? I contend that the thesis is factually not sustainable, and that legal treatises of ancient India do display a sophisticated conception of non-deontic operators. To this end I undertake a scrutiny of Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra, to determine the treatise’s use of non-deontic operators, and whether it treats them as entities in their own standing as opposed to derivatives or outcomes of the deontic. (shrink)

The well-being of generations yet to come must necessarily be an important concern for the present. As an extension of Rawls’ ‘just savings’ principle, one of the arguments for sustainable development is that of intergenerational equity—the idea that future generations must have the same access to natural resources as the present generation. In this article, I attempt to reconcile the divergent positions of the shareholder and stakeholder primacy debate by proposing that directors—acting for the corporation—should preserve intergenerational equity. Three arguments (...) are presented in course of this proposition. Firstly, corporations are perpetual in nature and their continuing existence is predicated upon the ability of individual owners to transfer their ownership. Second, directors have a higher fiduciary duty to the corporation and future shareholders, over that of present shareholders. Finally, in order to safeguard the interests of future shareholders, corporations must necessarily strive to preserve the natural and social environments upon which the future of the corporation and the wealth of future shareholders depend. (shrink)

Bréhier revives the possibility of Indian Upaniṣadic influence on Plotinus, specifically in the area of mysticism – asking what in Plotinus’ philosophy is foreign with respect to the Greek philosophical tradition. After Bréhier there are vigorous defenses of Plotinus’ Greek origins – not all of which respond directly to the key issues he raises, or address Plotinus’ mysticism specifically. My purpose in this paper is not to answer Bréhier, but to revisit him, for the purpose of delineating paradigmatic differences between (...) Plotinus’ metaphysics and that in Advaita Vedānta. Starting with differences in their respective texts and conceptions of the Divine, I explore concrete concepts (Māyā, tolma, the forms, gun․as, etc.), so unique to each tradition that they comprise the heart and essence of their differences. I assert as well that their metaphysical distinctions imply dissimilarities in their modes of mysticism. In this effort I uphold numinous experience above historical influences. This paper therefore has four parts: (1) Revisiting Bréhier, Armstrong, and Others; (2) Defining Terms: Texts, Methods, and Conceptions of the Divine (Striking Similarities); (3) Contrasting Advaita Vedānta and the Enneads (Paradigmatic Differences); and (4) Conclusion. (shrink)

This essay explores the humanistic dimensions of the unparalleled world-wide pandemic caused by Covid-19. Using both western and eastern sources, it seeks to draw wisdom from this tragedy – but also apply wisdom to it. Reflecting on the historical moment ensconcing this pandemic, and the fundamental metaphysical implications of Covid-19, this essay has three parts: (1) Precipice of History-Nature: This Historical Moment surrounding Covid-19; (2) Implications of a Pandemic for the nature of Nature and God; (3) Implications of a Pandemic (...) for Death, Predestination, Higher Faith – and likely Results. Viewing this moment as portentous in its anticipation of a new age, this essay uses the notion of a temporized precipice, to situate this pandemic historically. Drawing from western (Heidegger, Russell, Augustine, Catherine of Sienna, Epictetus, Plato, and Plotinus), and Indian (Gandhi, Vivekananda, and the Bhagavadgītā) sources, this essay offers both idealistic and realistic views of the likely results of Covid-19. (shrink)

One of the fundamental themes in economic theory is the study of the role of prices in achieving an optimal allocation of resources in a competitive, decentralized economy. The book begins with a review of the basic results on the rigorous elaboration of the Walras-Pareto theory in the context of a static economy with many agents. It summarizes some subsequent research in which the limits of the price-mechanism as a successful coordination device are recognized. When economic activity is allowed with (...) no pre-assigned terminal period, the two fundamental theorems linking competitive equilibrium allocations to Pareto optimality are challenged and the question of decentralization is carefully re-examined. With incomplete markets, and sequential trading, the concept of a Radner equilibrium is next introduced, and some of the striking properties of this are summarized. In a large economy with random shocks to preferences and/or endowments of individual agents, the implications of the celebrated laws of probability theory are explored. This book provides a clear and comprehensive analysis of the efficiency properties of general equilibrium, with many agents and an expanded list of commodities. It will be of particular interest to postgraduate and doctorate students of economic theory as well as scholars on Walrasian equilibrium, Pareto optimality and uncertainty theories. (shrink)

In Ennead III.7.11--13, Plotinus describes the genesis of time, and time's nature as the life of soul, and the moving image of eternity. In this dissertation, Ennead III.7.11--13 was read, using an exegetical method, which comprised, raising questions, and answering them, in strictly Plotinian terms, by contemplating the pieces that best fit into these puzzles. Some answers discovered were as follows. ;Before its appearance, time exists as the seed of time in Intellect. This is a state of rest because of (...) its relative unity, its participation in the genus rest, and its absence of tolma. Time's genesis comprises an eternal manifestation of a change of identity from seed to actualization. Time is generated in four logical steps. Soul becomes diluted upon its generative acts, mainly because of tolma. Soul has a far richer contemplation of Intellect underlying its genesis of the sensibles, than that underlying its genesis of time. ;Soul undergoes ontological loss in its generation of time and the sensible universe. Beginning with tolma, and the desires for autonomy unleashed by tolma, soul's multiplicity is enhanced. Yet this multiplicity is also tempered by soul's unquiet power's glance of aspiration towards Intellect. This glance is the contemplation, which fecundates soul's generation of time. Soul's power is its strength, but the unquietness of this power can indicate ontological loss. Tolma in soul incurs evil, because tolma thwarts soul from contemplating Intellect. ;The genus-species structure of soul is involved in the generation and omnipresence of time, through the actualization of the genus in its species. Time is ideally omnipresent when time is kairos. Soul is immortal and impassible, and it is only soul's activity and progeny, which are temporal. Time is the life of soul, insofar as movement is predicated of this life at three levels: the logical, the perceptible, and the spatial. Time itself is a poorer life than eternity, time itself is not alive, and yet, time is not unreal. Time is a moving image of eternity through the common predicates applied to both, which are their shared characteristics, defining the essence of the image that time constitutes. (shrink)

The well-being of generations yet to come must necessarily be an important concern for the present. As an extension of Rawls’ ‘just savings’ principle, one of the arguments for sustainable development is that of intergenerational equity—the idea that future generations must have the same access to natural resources as the present generation. In this article, I attempt to reconcile the divergent positions of the shareholder and stakeholder primacy debate by proposing that directors—acting for the corporation—should preserve intergenerational equity. Three arguments (...) are presented in course of this proposition. Firstly, corporations are perpetual in nature and their continuing existence is predicated upon the ability of individual owners to transfer their ownership. Second, directors have a higher fiduciary duty to the corporation and future shareholders, over that of present shareholders. Finally, in order to safeguard the interests of future shareholders, corporations must necessarily strive to preserve the natural and social environments upon which the future of the corporation and the wealth of future shareholders depend. (shrink)

Economists are used to associate the rationality of individual choice behaviour with simple and unchanging individual preference patterns, typically predicting unique behavioural outcomes in a choice situation − leaving little room for probing apparent inconsistencies (except in situations of game-theoretic stratagems used by the choosers), and no provision for analysing genuine dilemmas. The paper comments on the (in this respect) richer contents of two recent extensions of the concept of rational choice: the first involved in Sen’s theory of meta-ranking, and (...) the second implied in Scitovsky’s distinction between “pleasure” and “comfort” as the two constituents of the state of individual welfare. The paper then proceeds to suggest a somewhat similar extension of rationality implied, it is argued, in the idea of “development” or “becoming” as part of a chosen, distinct, and articulated process involved, specifically, in education, or more vaguely, in “modernisation”. The emerging concept of rationality which permits of changes in individual preference patterns consistently, in steps, and in a direction initiated and chosen by the individual himself, is claimed in the paper to be more appropriate for the analysis of choice situations likely to be encountered by rational individuals in a complex developing society. The consistency conditions for individual behaviour permitted by such rich, “directional”, rationality have, however, yet to be specified. (shrink)