This paper examines the realist interpretation of Vedānta that Rasvihari Das explicated in two of his celebrated treatises, namely, “The Theory of Ignorance in Advaitism” and “The Falsity of the World.” Rasvihari Das, unlike many of his contemporary thinkers of India, took a contrary position against the uninformed generalization about Indian thought that the philosophical tradition of India was one of an unbroken idealism and spiritualism. Though Rasviahari Das was influenced by his senior peer-thinkers of India like Hiralal Haldar, B. (...) N. Seal, and K. C. Bhattacharyya, Rasvihari Das had his own independent view on and interpretation of Vedānta. The paper argues that in the Vedāntic realism of Rasvihari Das there is no rejection of the world or the individuals. In the first part of the paper, I suggests the possible influence of Indian realism on Rasvihari Das. In the second part, I make an attempt to unearth and examine the interpretation of Rasvihari Das that unravels his Vedāntic realism. The third part is the concluding appraisal of Rasvihari Das who could take Vedānta forward from its religious moorings and place it resolutely on a philosophical candour. (shrink)

The article seeks a confrontation between phenomenology - in its husserlian and existential forms - with indian philosophy, Particularly the nyaya--Vaisesika, Samkhya--Vedanta and buddhist schools. Confrontation with husserlian phenomenology is carried through under three headings: (a) methodology, (b) theory of the 'eidos' and (c) the notion of transcendental subjectivity. Despite close affinities, Indian thought is found to lack the dialectics of intention and fulfillment and the supposed temporality and historicity of transcendental subjectivity. The existential concepts of 'sorge' and 'geworfenheit' are (...) set beside the indian concepts of 'duhkha' and 'samsara', The concepts of freedom and nothingness are contrasted, The notion of 'karma' evaluated. Some major trends of modern indian thought, Especially that of k.C. Bhattacharyya, Are then set in this entire context. (shrink)

This paper reviews the fate of the central ideas behind the complementary learning systems (CLS) framework as originally articulated in McClelland, McNaughton, and O’Reilly (1995). This framework explains why the brain requires two differentially specialized learning and memory systems, and it nicely specifies their central properties (i.e., the hippocampus as a sparse, pattern-separated system for rapidly learning episodic memories, and the neocortex as a distributed, overlapping system for gradually integrating across episodes to extract latent semantic structure). We review the application (...) of the CLS framework to a range of important topics, including the following: the basic neural processes of hippocampal memory encoding and recall, conjunctive encoding, human recognition memory, consolidation of initial hippocampal learning in cortex, dynamic modulation of encoding versus recall, and the synergistic interactions between hippocampus and neocortex. Overall, the CLS framework remains a vital theoretical force in the field, with the empirical data over the past 15 years generally confirming its key principles. (shrink)

I argue that lying in business negotiations is pro tanto wrong and no less wrong than lying in other contexts. First, I assert that lying in general is pro tanto wrong. Then, I examine and refute five arguments to the effect that lying in a business context is less wrong than lying in other contexts. The common thought behind these arguments—based on consent, self-defence, the “greater good,” fiduciary duty, and practicality—is that the particular circumstances which are characteristic of business negotiations (...) are such that the wrongness of lying is either mitigated or eliminated completely. I argue that all these “special exemption” arguments fail. I conclude that, in the absence of a credible argument to the contrary, the same moral constraints must apply to lying in business negotiations as apply to lying in other contexts. Furthermore, I show that for the negotiator, there are real practical benefits from not lying. (shrink)

The capacity to be creative, to produce new concepts, ideas, inventions, objects or art, is perhaps the most important attribute of the human brain. We know very little, however, about the nature of creativity or its neural basis. Some important questions include how should we define creativity? How is it related (or unrelated) to high intelligence? What psychological processes or environmental circumstance cause creative insights to occur? How is it related to conscious and unconscious processes? What is happening at the (...) neural level during moments of creativity? How is it related to health or illness, and especially mental illness? This paper will review introspective accounts from highly creative individuals. These accounts suggest that unconscious processes play an important role in achieving creative insights. Neuroimaging studies of the brain during "REST" (random episodic silent thought, also referred to as the default state) suggest that the association cortices are the primary areas that are active during this state and that the brain is spontaneously reorganising and acting as a self-organising system. Neuroimaging studies also suggest that highly creative individuals have more intense activity in association cortices when performing tasks that challenge them to "make associations." Studies of creative individuals also indicate that they have a higher rate of mental illness than a noncreative comparison group, as well as a higher rate of both creativity and mental illness in their first-degree relatives. This raises interesting questions about the relationship between the nature of the unconscious, the unconscious and the predisposition to both creativity and mental illness. (shrink)

The prospect of dealing with a rapidly and inexorably bleeding patient fills most medical practitioners with alarm. When that patient is a Jehovah's Witness, the knowledge that a blood transfusion is likely to be refused turns that alarm into a state of acute anxiety and conflict. This state is further heightened when the patient is young and otherwise healthy--a situation found particularly in obstetric practice with the occurrence of ante- and post-partum haemorrhage, and ectopic pregnancy. In the last 25 years (...) in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, there has been one maternal death in which the refusal to accept a blood transfusion has been considered to be an avoidable factor. In this article I have attempted to identify the magnitude of the problem in obstetric practice and have sought to clarify the moral and legal aspects. (shrink)

A short review is given of the Nuffield Council’s report on behavioural genetics. This review is used as an entry point to a discussion of the factors that influence the presentation of behavioural genetics in the media and in the popular scientific press. It is argued that our interest in formulating narrative explanations of our individual lives puts pressure on publishers and editors to present behavioural genetics in a selective, misleading, way. Some other influences on presentation are discussed and it (...) is suggested that the Nuffield report is particularly useful in so far as it lacks these distorting influences. (shrink)

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Philosophers, especially in recent years, have engaged in reflection upon the nature of experience. Such reflections have led them to draw a distinction between conscious and unconscious mentality in terms of whether or not it is like something to have a mental state. Reflection upon the history of psychology and upon contemporary cognitive science, however, identifies the distinction between conscious and unconscious mental states to be primarily one which is drawn in epistemic terms. Consciousness is an epistemic notion marking the (...) special kind of first-person knowledge we have of our own mental states. Psychologists have found it expedient, for explanatory reasons, to ignore or reject the assumption that we have exhaustive first-person knowledge of our mental states and, in doing so, use the term 'unconscious' to indicate the peculiar epistemic status of certain mental states.It is argued that epistemic consciousness is distinct from the subjective-experiential notion of consciousness, from 'access-consciousness' and from higher-order thought conceptions of mental state consciousness, and that epistemic consciousness has an important role to play in philosophy of mind and in the history of psychology. (shrink)

The traditional verbal/nonverbal dichotomy is inadequate for completely describing cerebral lateralization. Musical functions are not necessarily mediated by the right hemisphere; evidence for a specialist left-hemisphere mechanism dedicated to the encoded speech signal is weakening, and the right hemisphere possesses considerable comprehensional powers. Right-hemisphere processing is often said to be characterized by holistic or gestalt apprehension, and face recognition may be mediated by this hemisphere partly because of these powers, partly because of the right hemisphere's involvement in emotional affect, and (...) possibly through the hypothesized existence of a specialist face processor or processors in the right. The latter hypothesis may, however, suffer the same fate as the one relating to a specialist encodedness processor for speech in the left. Verbal processing is largely the province of the left because of this hemisphere's possession of sequential, analytic, time-dependent mechanisms. Other distinctions are special cases of an analytic/holistic dichotomy. More fundamentally, however, the left hemisphere is characterized by its mediation of discriminations involving duration, temporal order, sequencing, and rhythm, at thesensory level, and especially at themotorlevel. Spatial aspects characterize the right, the mapping of exteroceptive body space, and the positions of fingers, limbs, and perhaps articulators, with respect to actual and target positions. Thus there is a continuum of function between the hemispheres, rather than a rigid dichotomy, the differences being quantitative rather than qualitative, of degree rather than of kind. (shrink)

Interactive narratives are inextricable from the way that we understand our encounters with digital technology. This is based upon the way that these encounters are processually formed into a narrative of episodic events, arranged and re-arranged by various levels of agency. After describing past research conducted at the iCinema Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, this paper sets out a framework within which to build a relational theory of interactive narrative formation, outlining future research in the area.

In his thesis Para uma Teoria Geral dos Homomorfismos (1944), the Portuguese mathematician José Sebastião e Silva constructed an abstract or generalized Galois theory, that is intimately linked to F. Klein’s Erlangen Program and that foreshadows some notions and results of today’s model theory; an analogous theory was independently worked out by M. Krasner in 1938. In this paper, we present a version of the theory making use of tools which were not at Silva’s disposal. At the same time, we (...) tried to keep in mind, so much as possible, the gist of his standpoint. (shrink)

Walsh admirably achieves the objective of this book, which is to supply the need for a lucid commentary on Kant’s first Critique that is both faithful to making the text clear and a sophisticated assessment of the arguments. Walsh’s work exemplifies patience, scholarship, and philosophical acumen. In response to the conventional criticism that Kant’s theses are marred by a psychological idiom, Walsh translates Kant into the contemporary linguistic idiom in a way that preserves the original remarkably well.

This book is a neo-Feyerabendian excursion into epistemology and metaphysics. As such it exhibits all of the strengths and weaknesses of that genre. It presupposes some familiarity on the part of the reader with the Kuhn to Feyerabend literature, and it takes for granted the acceptance of such things as paradigm switches and the theory-ladenness of observation.

In pursuit of the first aim, Kekes directs his book to the attention of Anglo-American philosophers who have forsaken the key philosophical task. His approach is twofold. Writing in a post-Kuhnian period, he rebuts those versions of philosophical theorizing predicated on the distinction between discovery and justification. At the same time he presents an incisive running critique of scientism and the reduction of philosophy to its hand-maiden. He reminds us that science itself is only intelligible if there is already a (...) humanistic world-view. (shrink)