Connected to the jurisprudence surrounding the copyrightability of a factual compilation, this book locates the footprints of the standard envisaged in a US Supreme court decision (Feist) in Europe. In particular, it observes the extent of similarity of such jurisprudence to the standard adopted and deliberated in the European Union. Many a times the reasons behind law making goes unnoticed. The compelling situations and the history existing prior to an enactment helps in understanding the balance that exists in a particular (...) legislation. While looking at the process of enacting the Database Directive (96/9/EC), this book reflects upon the concern that was expressed with the outcome of Feist decision in Europe. (shrink)

Some criticisms are offered of Barwise and Etchemendy's theory of truth, the principal one being that it violates a feature of truth called “supervenience”.

Anil Gupta; XV*—Remarks on Definitions and the Concept of Truth1, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 89, Issue 1, 1 June 1989, Pages 227–246, https.

Debates about God’s personhood, or lack thereof, are central to philosophy of religion. This paper aims to advance these debates by presenting the “greatness of personhood argument” for God’s personhood and a dilemma for those who deny God’s personhood. I also consider various objections to this argument and this dilemma and argue that they fail. Notably, my reasoning in defence of personal theism is cross-cultural insofar as personal theists across various religious traditions can use it. Thus, this paper defends personal (...) theism in a manner that can bring Western and non-Western theists into closer dialogue regarding the topic of God’s personhood. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.1 (2002) 93-96 [Access article in PDF] Phenomenological Methods in Psychiatry:A Necessary First Step M. Gupta and L. Rex Kay Keywords: behavior, empathy, human science, methodology, natural science, phenomenology. WE ARE GRATEFUL to the journal for prviding the opportunity for exchange and discussion of some of the themes raised in our paper, "The impact of phenomenology on North American psychiatric assessment" and we are (...) pleased to be able to reply to the two excellent commentaries by McMillan and Morley. Both McMillan and Morley question the prospect of employing phenomenology and its methods in psychiatric assessment, and in psychiatric practice more generally. McMillan questions the utility of such a step, and Morley is pessimistic about its feasibility. We shall address each author's concerns in turn.Initially, let us restate the aims of our paper to contextualize our arguments and those made in the commentaries. First, we sought an understanding of what is meant by North American psychiatrists, working within the DSM framework, when they refer to the phenomenological approach to psychiatric assessment. To elucidate this meaning, we compared the contemporary North American usage to a small number of definitions of phenomenology, particularly those definitions that were, and are now, applied to clinical psychiatric work. Contrary to McMillan's suggestion, we did not intend to state definitively what should or should not count as phenomenological, but rather to compare North American psychiatric assessment to what typically has counted as phenomenological. Second, we sought to examine phenomenology's influence on North American psychiatric practice, particularly psychotherapy.Morley argues that such influences usually exemplify the inappropriate appending of phenomenology to psychiatric practice rather than true integration of different paradigms. Although we do not disagree with this general contention, we will argue that the deployment of phenomenological methods in psychiatric assessment is a necessary first step toward the kind of integration he proposes.McMillan makes two related but unintegrated points. First, he argues that objective, behavioral data are phenomenological, according to his broad definition of the term. Second, he proposes that, if the behavioral and the phenomenological are different, we are better off staying with the behavioral when it comes to psychiatric nosology. Let us consider these two points in succession.McMillan seeks to broaden Jasper's definition of phenomenology to include objective observations [End Page 93] as phenomenological. To this end, he distinguishes methods from aims. He summarizes Jasper's definition of phenomenology as "an empirical method for investigating 'individual psychic experience (p 55)" and claims that this is a statement of aim or objectives. He then urges us to "consider the merits of different phenomenological methodologies in terms of their success in achieving this objective" whether or not they utilize "all the methods" of phenomenology. This is much like saying that if we treat waving one's hand as a method for greeting someone, we are then free to treat the objective of the wave as one of greeting someone, and then say that anything that serves as a greeting is, by definition, a "wave." Whatever else McMillan's objective observations are, he has not convinced us that they are phenomenological, anymore than we are likely to convince you that a kiss on the lips is really just a wave.Nonetheless, it is worthwhile seeing what McMillan does with this argument. He tells us that we can "read the first-person experience from behavior in a fairly accurate and informative way." He uses the example of a father gazing at his young child and notes that it is not unreasonable to infer that he is experiencing loving and nurturing feelings. It is, indeed, not unreasonable to draw such an inference. But it is far more reasonable to infer that the father is experiencing a cacophony of feelings, including, but not limited to, love, concern, anxiety, pride, envy, hope, and sadness (Stern 1995, 18-58). If we are able to distinguish which of these feelings is dominant at any given moment—which we are—and if we are also able to track subtle shifts in such feelings... (shrink)

_An Introduction to Indian Philosophy_ offers a profound yet accessible survey of the development of India’s philosophical tradition. Beginning with the formation of Brahmanical, Jaina, Materialist, and Buddhist traditions, Bina Gupta guides the reader through the classical schools of Indian thought, culminating in a look at how these traditions inform Indian philosophy and society in modern times. Offering translations from source texts and clear explanations of philosophical terms, this text provides a rigorous overview of Indian philosophical contributions to epistemology, (...) metaphysics, philosophy of language, and ethics. This is a must-read for anyone seeking a reliable and illuminating introduction to Indian philosophy. (shrink)

In this rigorous investigation into the logic of truth Anil Gupta and Nuel Belnap explain how the concept of truth works in both ordinary and pathological..

North American psychiatric literature describes the current method of psychiatric diagnostic assessment as "phenomenological"; however, it is unclear what phenomenology 1 means in this context. This paper investigates the meaning and impact of some of the major philosophical and psychiatric definitions of phenomenology on contemporary psychiatric assessment. Employing a comparative analysis of selected definitions of phenomenology, this paper argues that North American psychiatric assessment does not reflect any of these definitions of phenomenology. Instead, within the context of psychiatric assessment, phenomenology (...) has taken on an idiosyncratic, clinical meaning of signs and symptoms. However, this does not mean that phenomenology has had no impact on North American psychiatry. This paper contends that phenomenology has made contributions to psychiatry, particularly in the area of psychotherapy and especially in self-psychological psychotherapy. The importance of the concept of empathy within psychotherapy is evidence of the continuing influence of philosophical phenomenology on psychiatry. This paper concludes that phenomenology can provide an important complementary perspective to the dominant methods of North American psychiatric practice. (shrink)

Business ethics is understood in a comprehensive and differentiated sense, as in recent years it has evolved under the influence of globalization. The present book examines inclusive growth, which includes more than just poverty alleviation and seeks to address the problem of equity through the enhancement of opportunities for all parties. This conforms to the fundamental task of business ethics, which is to enhance the ethical quality of decision-making and actions taken at all levels of business, id est, at the (...) personal (micro-), organizational (meso-), and systemic (macro-) levels and thus extending the narrow notion of business ethics as a niche for managers with good intentions. In the real world of competition and coordination, various situations produce various tradeoffs that the three pillars of the economy - Business, Government and Society - have to pursue for their survival and sustenance. In this book, we look into many such case studies in which the strength of one component leads to a benefit for one of the other components and a detriment for the other, thus causing an imbalance between the three pillars. This book will be equally valuable to students, philosophers, decision-makers in business and policy-makers at large. (shrink)

Knowledge management hinges upon the presumption that workers within an organization possess knowledge that can be converted into concrete business improvements if the information is harvested and disseminated to others to whom it could be of use. True knowledge management must involve capturing the internal knowledge generated by a firm—its best thinking on products, customers, competitors and processes—and sharing it. Insofar as organizations are concerned, postmodernists argue that one view that has been in appropriately privileged is that of the organization (...) rather than the process of organizing. They draw our attention to the link between individual and collective identity. If there is a link between individual identity and how that individual behaves, there may also a link between collective identity and organizational action, for which a study on discourse ethics is essential. After considering the implications of knowledge management and the actual situation and work culture where the knowledge workers are in action, this paper raises and explores the questions wherein lies our individual identity and what its functional relation ship with the collective identity is. It has been envisaged in this article that through principles-driven cross-functional teams and innovative organizational mechanisms, sharing and conviction building need to be facilitated in modern organizations phasing out bureaucratic approaches and hierarchical power domination. Flexibility with a focused attitude is a must for organizations to adapt in a changing environment. (shrink)

Perceptual load plays a critical role in identification and awareness of stimuli. Given the differences in emotion–attention interactions, we investigated the perception of distractor emotional faces in two different load conditions under divided attention with a task based on the inattentional blindness paradigm. Participants performed a low- or high-load task with a string of letters presented against a happy, sad or neutral face (in a circular form) as the background. Participants were asked to identify the face that appeared in the (...) critical trial. Results indicate an interaction between emotion and load. First, identification of faces with happy expression was better than chance and unaffected by load. Second, performance was worse than chance for faces with sad expression in the high-load condition, indicating inhibition of unattended sad distractor faces in the critical trial. This indicates that inhibitory processes during a difficult attentional task under divided attention influence subsequent perception of distractor stimuli especially sad faces. The results have implications for the theories of selective attention as well as the role of emotions in conscious perception. (shrink)

Traditionally, the problem of evil, in its various formulations, has been one of the strongest objections against perfect being theism. In the voluminous literature on this problem, the motif of evil has usually been discussed with respect to human flourishing. In recent decades more focused attention has been paid to animal suffering and the philosophical problems that such suffering poses for perfect being theists. However, this growing body of literature, in Anglo-American philosophical milieus, is largely aimed at sketching a specifically (...) Christian or Christianity-inflected theodicy that would reconcile animal suffering with the existence of an omni-God. In contrast, there are few, if any, systematic attempts to put forth a Hindu theodicy that aims to offer morally justifiable reasons that God has for allowing animal suffering. In this article, we address this scholarly lacuna by illustrating how a Hindu perfect being theist might respond to the problem of animal suffering. (shrink)

This article uses critical discourse analysis to examine how the higher COVID-19 infection rates among South Asians in general, and Punjabis more specifically, have been represented by conservative politicians and their representatives as a consequence of cultural and religious practices. Two counter-narratives are discussed. The first substitutes the negative image of the Sikh Punjabi Canadian community with a celebratory and positive view of Sikh humanitarianism and community service. The second attributes the high numbers to class attributes such as precarious jobs, (...) poverty-level wages, employment insecurity, lack of sick days, over-crowded housing, racism and lack of access to healthcare. We argue that the conservative explanation as well as the first counter-narrative reveal continuities in culturalist understandings of South Asian immigrants, albeit in slightly different ways. The second counter-narrative represents a discursive resistance by advancing a structural analysis of health and disease in immigrant communities. (shrink)

Human development can be seen as the process of giving more effective expression to human values. Modern business philosophy has a certain viewpoint or perspective on human potential based on the secular humanistic values of the west and the scientific theories on the nature of man and his evolution. We are bound to welcome the New Paradigm in Business because it opens the path for a decisive step forward in evolution from an authoritarian, mechanistic, Taylorian era to a freer and (...) a more humanistic ethos in business. (shrink)

Cameron et al ’s1 ethical considerations about the ‘Dualism of Values’ in pandemic response emphasise the need to strike a fair balance between the interests of the less vulnerable to COVID-19 and the interests of the more vulnerable. Those considerations are at the basis of ethical defences of focused protection strategies.2 One example is the proposal put forward in the Great Barrington Declaration. It presented focused protection strategies as more ethical alternatives to lockdowns which would prevent lockdowns’ ‘irreparable damage, with (...) the underprivileged disproportionately harmed’.3 Here we want to suggest that a version of Cameron et al ’s analysis can be applied to the case of vaccines to support a focused protection vaccination strategy. At this stage, we should limit vaccination to the vulnerable and not target children in COVID-19 vaccination strategies. We argue that, given the current state of knowledge about COVID-19, immunity and vaccines, it would be wrong to pose the costs and risks of vaccines on children for three reasons. First, they are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination …. (shrink)

Samatavilasa, The Radiant Sameness, shows the way of finding our fallen condition itself as redemptive. We are not merely to accept our pain and our mortal condition but to live these and become these. In becoming that pain lies our bliss, in living our mortality immortality. That alone is the highest bliss and absolute, that alone is salvation the final, this our becoming one with our mortal and absolutely tragic lot. That is what the state of samata, sameness, is. Only (...) that man is a mukta, a liberated soul, who can look alike on Maya and Brahman, on reality and appearance, on bondage and liberation, on life and death, on misery and joy. Not that there is an actual state called the state of liberation, an actual bliss that is absolute and highest, for terms like absolute and highest turn out to be relative, and, therefore, mis-leading. Hypostati-zation of samata would not work, for all hypo-statization is rooted in our narcissistic passion. Yet Samatavilasa would not, in actual fact does not, encourage us to look alike on these opposites constitutive of our mortal being as long as we fight a desperate fight against our inevitable and destined fate, fate the mortal; a stern discipline we have to undergo before we can even think of samata, sameness, not to speak of living it. For, not before dying unto himself can a man look alike on these dualities, the stuff our mortal life and being are made of. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The paper examines the ethical conception of the most well‐known and much discussed Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gītā, in the context of the Western distinction between duty ethics and virtue ethics. Most of the materials published on the Gītā make much of its conception of duty; however, there is no systematic investigation of the notion of virtue in the Gītā. The paper begins with a discussion of the fundamental characteristics of virtue ethics, before undertaking a discussion of the conceptions (...) of duty and virtue in the Gītā. The paper clearly demonstrates that (1) both duty and virtue coexist in the Gītā, and (2) the Gītā accords virtue an important place. (shrink)

This book aims to offer an account of conscious experience and of concepts that help us understand empirical reasoning and empirical dialectic. The account offered possesses, it is claimed, two virtues. First, it provides great theoretical freedom. It allows the theoretician freedom to radically reconceive the world. The theoretician may, for example, begin with the conception that colors are genuine qualities of physical bodies and may, in light of empirical findings, shift to the conception that colors are not genuine qualities (...) at all. Second, the account grants empirical reason a great power to constrain: empirical reason can force a particular conception of the self and the world on the rational inquirer. These seemingly contrary virtues are reconciled through a novel treatment of presentation and appearances in the account offered of conscious experience and a novel treatment of ostensive definitions in the account offered of concepts. The argument of the book is buttressed by a critical study of the principal approaches to experience and reason found in the philosophical literature.--. (shrink)

The epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and theology of Sankhya, one of the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy.

New York based Families For Freedom is among a handful of organizations that directly organize deportees and their families. Analyzing the organization’s resignification of criminalized men of color as caregivers, I argue that current deportation policies and practices reorganize care work and kinship while tying gender and sexuality to national belonging. These policies and practices severely compromise the ability of migrant communities to socially reproduce themselves. Furthermore, the convergence of criminalization and immigration enforcement renders the kinship ties of deportable men (...) illegible, and justifies their separation from their loved ones. Since FFF publicly supports men with criminal convictions, it reveals that its members become targets of deportation precisely because they do not and cannot conform to heteronormative prescriptions. (shrink)

We are grateful to Professor Robert Koons for his excellent, and generous, review (henceforth KR) of our book The Revision Theory of Truth (henceforth RTT). Koons provides in KR a welcome guide to our RTT, and he puts forward objections that deserve serious consideration. In this note we shall respond only to his principal objection.' This objection, which is developed on pp. 625 — 628 of KR, calls into question our main thesis. As we argue below, however, the objection is (...) not successful. We should forewarn the reader that this note is not self-contained. It presupposes familiarity with RTT (primarily, Chapter 4) and with KR. The main thesis of RTT is that truth is a circular concept. We argued that the Tarski biconditionals, read as partial definitions, constitute an intensionally adequate definition of truth. In other words, if T is a predicate defined by the Tarski-style infinitistic definition (I). (shrink)

In this groundbreaking book, psychiatrist and ethicist Mona Gupta analyzes the basic assumptions of Evidence-based medicine (EBM), and critically examines their applicability to psychiatry. Highlighting ethical tensions between psychiatry and EBM, she asks the controversial question - should psychiatrists practice evidence-based medicine at all?

The editorial introduces issue 21.1 of Technoetic Arts via a critical reflection on the artificial intelligence hype (AI hype) that emerged in 2022. Tracing the history of the critique of Large Language Models, the editorial underscores that there are substantial ethical challenges related to bias in the training data, copyright issues, as well as ecological challenges which the technology industry has consistently downplayed over the years. -/- The editorial highlights the distinction between the current AI technology’s reliance on extensive pre-existing (...) human-generated data for pattern recognition and the performative process inherent in art practice. Patterns of creative output can be replicated without a thorough understanding of underlying concepts. In contrast, the performative process of art practice, as explored through the conceptual frameworks of creativity by Noam Chomsky, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Roger T. Ames and with reference to an earlier publication of the editorial’s author, creates concepts and continually ‘strives to extend itself towards the unknown.’ -/- Following this introductory section, the editorial provides an overview of the ten articles featured in this issue of Technoetic Arts. The first four texts engage with emerging technologies from various perspectives in art and design. The subsequent six articles, part of a special section titled 'Perspectives from Chandigarh,' reflect a quest for meaningful existence within colonial, patriarchal, and biopolitical structures that frame everyday practices of exclusion and oppression. (shrink)

This compilation analyzes the differences between the concepts of ‘social responsibility’ and ‘business ethics’, which are often erroneously interpreted to be the same. It explains that social responsibility is a characteristic but just one of the many aspects of the much wider concept of business ethics. The collection includes contributions from experts from diverse fields such as industry, academia, and non-governmental organizations, who present the theoretical underpinning of the concepts, along with real-life case studies dealing with the varied, hands-on experiences (...) of leaders from different industries. (shrink)

This book offers a novel account of the relationship of experience to knowledge. The account builds on the intuitive idea that our ordinary perceptual judgments are not autonomous, that an interdependence obtains between our view of the world and our perceptual judgments. Anil Gupta shows in this important study that this interdependence is the key to a satisfactory account of experience. He uses tools from logic and the philosophy of language to argue that his account of experience makes available (...) an attractive and feasible empiricism. (shrink)