Libertarians are an increasingly prominent ideological group in U.S. politics, yet they have been largely unstudied. Across 16 measures in a large web-based sample that included 11,994 self-identified libertarians, we sought to understand the moral and psychological characteristics of self-described libertarians. Based on an intuitionist view of moral judgment, we focused on the underlying affective and cognitive dispositions that accompany this unique worldview. Compared to self-identified liberals and conservatives, libertarians showed 1) stronger endorsement of individual liberty as their foremost guiding (...) principle, and weaker endorsement of all other moral principles; 2) a relatively cerebral as opposed to emotional cognitive style; and 3) lower interdependence and social relatedness. As predicted by intuitionist theories concerning the origins of moral reasoning, libertarian values showed convergent relationships with libertarian emotional dispositions and social preferences. Our findings add to a growing recognition of the role of personality differences in the organization of political attitudes. (shrink)

Las posturas dogmáticas y escépticas respecto al problema de las otras mentes comparten al menos un supuesto que las convierte en las dos caras de la misma moneda: pensar que el conocimiento de las otras mentes y el de la propia mente son idénticos. Cavell discute este supuesto compartido y el del mito de lo interno convirtiendo el problema de las otras mentes en un problema de auto conocimiento.

In this book, first published by OUP USA in 1973, Professor Iyer elucidates the central concepts in the moral and political thought of Mahatma Gandhi, bringing out the subtlety, potency, and universal importance of his concepts of truth and non-violence, freedom and obligation, and his view of the relation between means and ends in politics.

Meditations.--Some views on Paul Deussen's "Elements of metaphysics."--The fundamentals of Vedanta.--Uma's mirror.--The drum-beat of angels.--Heroes of ancient Ind.--The spirit of Vedic Ind.--Was Śaṅkara a crypto-Buddhist?--Vedic support for non-dualism.--The system of Ramanuja with side-lights on those of Madhava and Śaṅkara.--The system of Sankhya.--The system of thought revealed in the Bhagavad-gītā.--The philosophy of Advaita or non-dualism.--"Tiger" Varadachar.

Embryos and microscopes share a long, remarkable history and biologists have always been intrigued to watch how embryos develop under the microscope. Here we discuss the advances in microscopy which have greatly influenced our current understanding of embryogenesis. We highlight the evolution of microscopes and the optical technologies that have been instrumental in studying various developmental processes. These imaging modalities provide mechanistic insights into the dynamic cellular and molecular events which drive lineage commitment and morphogenetic changes in the developing embryo. (...) We begin the journey with a brief history of microscopy to study embryos. First, we review the principles and optics of light, fluorescence, confocal, and electron microscopy which have been key techniques for imaging cellular and molecular events during embryonic development. Next, we discuss recent key imaging modalities such as light‐sheet microscopy, which are suitable for whole embryo imaging. Further, we highlight imaging techniques like multiphoton and super resolution microscopy for beyond light diffraction limit, high resolution imaging. Lastly, we review some of the scattering‐based imaging methods and techniques used for imaging human embryos. (shrink)

Arguing that the seafarers in Hölderlin’s late hymn “Remembrance” are ambiguous, as they keep slipping between the figure of the merchant and the refugee, this paper juxtaposes how the ambiguous seafarers in Hölderlin’s poem and the protagonists in Coetzee’s The Childhood of Jesus, who are all refugees, relate to the sea. This juxtaposition allows us to arrive at a philosophical distillation of the existence of the refugee, who, caught between the competing injunctions to forget and to remember, represents the entire (...) gamut of human existence. Coetzee’s novel complements Hölderlin’s poem by showing us that the refugee, in facing existential dilemmas that pertain to the very ground of all morality, is not to be seen as a victim or an eternal object of pity, but as a figure exhibiting a sovereignty of incomparable magnitude. (shrink)

This journal's well-intentioned consideration of the arts has turned out to be quite the Pandora's box. As soon as we broach the subject of aesthetics, we are already in the realm of ideology; as soon as we impose the frame of scientific inquiry upon any subject, we invoke another kind of ideology. The previous issues in this series have depicted the unfolding of an ideological clash of cultures between sciences and the humanities, enough to make C.P. Snow blush. For the (...) time being, this is an unavoidable condition; yet the more we remain aware of it, the further we may push our insights. (shrink)

Although arguments are a good way of exploring the limitations and complexities of a concept or a theory we may find ourselves faced with a real phenomenon that challenges the existing formulations of a concept or a theory so strongly and reveals its limitations to us so starkly that we are forced to break away from the current discussion and start anew. Such is the challenge posed by the phenomenon of farmer suicides on our existing theories of corporate social responsibility. (...) Contemporary discussions in corporate ethics are replete with many theories of corporate social responsibility which in one way or the other rely on the concept of the social contract. For the most part these theories have gone unchallenged and no fundamental limitations have been revealed. However, the phenomenon of farmer suicides in central India poses a serious challenge to them. This article attempts to show how the phenomenon of farmer suicides in central India starkly exposes some of the fundamental limitations of the contractarian formulations of corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

This book focuses on moral and political education and critically engages with educational issues from a philosophical perspective. It engages with questions of moral education as well as questions about citizenship education, to address apprehensions on learning in a liberal democracy while parallelly invoking issues from within the curriculum, the school environment and teacher-student relationship. With contributions from renowned philosophers and educationists, this volume discusses themes like civic education and liberal democracy; toleration and freedom; Tagore's conception of the moral and (...) political self; key issues in moral education; cosmopolitanism, compassion, care ethics and moral purpose of schooling; to revisit and rethink some foundational questions related to education, curriculum and pedagogy. This volume will be essential reading for educationists and educators, and will be important for scholars and researchers of philosophy of education, education, teacher education and school education. (shrink)

By systematically uncovering and comprehensively examining the epistemological implications of Heidegger's history of being and Foucault's archaeology of discursive formations, Towards an Epistemology of Ruptures shows how Heidegger and Foucault significantly expand the notions of knowledge and thought. This is done by tracing their path-breaking responses to the question: What is the object of thought? The book shows how for both thinkers thought is not just the act by which the object is represented in an idea, and knowledge not just (...) a state of the mind of the individual subject corresponding to the object. Each thinker, in his own way, argues that thought is a productive event in which the subject and the object gain their respective identity and knowledge is the opening up of a space in which the subject and object can encounter each other and in which true and false statements about an object become possible. They thereby lay the ground for a new conceptual framework for rethinking the very relationship between knowledge and its object. (shrink)

The advent of pharmacogenomics—the study of how the human genome influences drug response within a person or population—has begun to drive the development of pharmaceuticals in Western medicine today. Although pharmacogenomics promises dramatic improvement in drug safety and efficacy, the field also raises a host of ethical questions. The need to protect informed consent and confidentiality and to promote justice and equity—both nationally and globally—requires that one approach pharmacogenomics with an enthusiastic, yet critical, eye. Drawing on the normative values of (...) respect for persons (as both autonomous and relational), human well-being, socioeconomic justice, and human solidarity and the common good, this article offers several concrete suggestions for public policy to help ensure that pharmacogenomics develops in a way that promotes the good of both individuals and the broader society. (shrink)

On philosophy, religion, education, culture, etc.

Extant business ethics literature available for application to international business demonstrates some variety but no comprehensive principles. While the domains of both international business and business ethics are expanding, they are also becoming increasingly divergent. At the same time, the primacy accorded to the multinational enterprise in both fields ignores the socio-cultural and political embeddedness of economic activities, and multiple agencies in international business (individuals, firms, nations, etc.). Some international business theorists have offered the view that international exchange should be (...) the central building block for theories on international business. In this paper, it is argued that international exchange could be the fundamental unit of analysis for international business ethics as well. The potentially unifying features of exchange norms and ethical principles leads the author to develop some core exchange ethics principles that are tested on three recent international business practices. (shrink)

Are mathematical objects affected by their historicity? Do they simply lose their identity and their validity in the course of history? If not, how can they always be accessible in their ideality regardless of their transmission in the course of time? Husserl and Foucault have raised this question and offered accounts, both of which, albeit different in their originality, are equally provocative. Both acknowledge that a scientific object like a geometrical theorem or a chemical equation has a history because it (...) is only constituted in and transmitted through history. But they see that history as a part of its ideality, so that, although historical, a scientific object retains its identity as one and the same object. (shrink)

Bruno Bauer’s response to Max Stirner’s Der Einzige und sein Eigentum is here examined closely, for the first time. In working out their concepts of freedom and self-determination, the Hegelian Left stressed different elements in the synthesis which Hegel himself had effected. Options appear that can be described as generally Fichtean or Spinozistic; each has distinct political and ethical implications. Bauer’s claim is that Stirner “Unique One” is to be understood as a version of Spinozist substance, which fails to rise (...) to the Fichtean-Hegelian standpoint of rational subjectivit y which his own thought represents. The paper endorses Bauer’s conclusion that essential differences between his republicanism and universalism, as opposed to Stirner’s anarchism and particularism, can be traced to divergent receptions of Fichte and Spinoza, as mediated through Hegel. With references to Hegel’s critiques of Spinoza, the paper reconstructs Bauer’s argumentation on the inadequacies of a merely substantial view of freedom. (shrink)

In this book Professor Berry concisely and convincingly demonstrates two points: the various reasons “why Hume’s thought has indeed been frequently read as a contributor to or progenitor of conservatism”, and why the author nonetheless disagrees with this assessment. According to Berry, to identify some—or in fact many—elements or strains of conservative thoughts in Hume’s writings is one thing and to classify him as a conservative thinker another. Berry picks up four major themes of analysis: Hume’s theories of causation and (...) of justice, his economic thought, and his remarks on superstition. Rather than constituting distinct elements of the philosopher’s thought, these strands are seen as closely. (shrink)

The practice of sending and receiving sexually explicit images via mobile phones has grown exponentially in recent years with the accessibility of cellular technology. This essay examines this practice, when conducted by teenagers, in light of a Christian feminist approach to justice. Without harmfully exhorting girls' sexual "purity", we must nevertheless develop a moral framework that challenges the practice of sexting while simultaneously empowering young women to claim primary control over their own sexual experience. For Christians, justice, addressed to sexting, (...) must attend to sexual injustice even as it promotes genuine freedom, embodiment, mutuality and relational intimacy, and equality. (shrink)

This essay provides an overview of Poteat’s thought, beginning with his basic problem of the eradication of the embodied person from accounts of human knowing in the critical tradition. Poteat’s analysis of the move from “place” to “space” as the arena of living shows his procedure. I isolate six elements of the recovery of the person in his work: the necessity of his strange vocabulary, the need to embed knowing in time, the primacy of speech over writing, the centrality of (...) the body to all knowing, the mindbodily unity of the person, and the mindbody as the ground of all meaning-making. I conclude with three questions: Is Descartes, or bourgeois culture, the real villain of modern thought? Isn’t language, rather than the mindbody, a more appropriate place to locate the absolute center of the Real? Isn’t there a need to flesh out Poteat’s individualistic focus with the communal dimensions of personhood? (shrink)

As is well known among readers of Tradition and Discovery, William H. Poteat was a central influence in bringing Michael Polanyi to the attention of American scholars and, particularly, to the interest of scholarship in religion and theology. Poteat’s own work was heavily impacted by Polanyi. In turn, Polanyi’s affiliationwith Poteat at Duke and elsewhere clearly impressed and edified Polanyi and led to Polanyi’s request for Poteat’s collaboration with him on Meaning and to the prospect of Polanyi’s coming to Duke (...) for six weeks to facilitate this. Unfortunately, that promising time was not realized. This present essay represents an effortto discern a direction in which such a collaboration might have deeply and felicitously influenced Polanyi’s interpretation and celebration of his own poignant, yet quite restless, religious sensibilities. (shrink)

There are two opposing views on the nature of corporations in contemporary debates on corporate social responsibility. Opponents of corporate personhood hold that a corporation is nothing but a group of individuals coming together to achieve certain goals. On the other hand, the advocates of corporate personhood believe that corporations are persons in their own right existing over and above the individuals who comprise them. They talk of corporate decision-making structures that help translate individual decisions and actions into corporate decisions (...) and actions. Importantly both the advocates and the opponents of corporate personhood rely on a contractual model of corporate–social interaction to explain corporate social responsibilty. However, this contractual model misses crucial aspects of the relationship between corporations and societies. Economic history reveals that the relationship between corporations and societies is essentially dynamic and heterogeneous and so extremely difficult to characterise in terms of a contract. The economic and the political aspects of this relationship are so finely intertwined with each other and it is impossible to extricate the one from the other. We need to be more conscious of the actual nature of corporate–social interaction in order to deal more comprehensively with issues of corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

The mind is not structured anatomically, as emphasized by modern pathology. Instead, it is expanded as a whole in a subtle form behind the physical body. In the Indian system of medical philosophy, the mind is considered as the astral nerves made third body, which identified as the ‘Manomaya-sharira’ (subconscious mind). The mind is composed of millions of astralnadis, through which Pranic-energies circulate freely into the astral anatomy of mind. Seven-chakras are found parallel to the spine, serving as the major (...) seven innovation centres in the body. These Chakras facilitate the connection of the mind with the seven dimensions of the inner world. From these dimensions the Pranic-energies including Sattva, Raja, Tama are exported to the mind and its Nadi-tantras, influencing both the outer and inner subconscious minds. Subsequently, these elements, viz., Sattva, Raja and Tama are thrown from the mind to the outer world through the seven sense organs, manifesting as either constructive or destructive activities. Thus the mind exists due to ‘Prana’, (energy of Omkara) which increases through deeper meditation, sound sleep, and breathing exercises (O2). The positional behaviour of the mind shifts according to the physical and mental temperament, namely Triguna and Tridosha, or Panchavikara. The negative energy (Tama-guna) of the fourth dimension enters the astral Nadis-system of the mind via the interspace of the solar plexus, which crushes the mind’s structures, and consequently, all the Chakras are corrupted and the Nadis are blocked, so it generates a break in the circulation of ‘Prana’ into the Nadis. As a result, many socio-economic challenges and psychosomatic disorders occur. (shrink)