Metacognition, the ability to monitor and evaluate our own cognitive processes, confers advantages to individuals and their own judgment. A more recent hypothesis, however, states that explicit metacognition may also enhance the collective judgment of groups, and may enhance human collaboration and coordination. Here, we investigate this social function hypothesis of metacognition with arguably one of the oldest collaboration problems humans face, common-pool resource use. Using an agent-based model that simulates repeated group interactions and the forming of collective judgments about (...) resource extraction, we show that (1) in “kind” environments (where confidence and judgment accuracy correlate positively), explicit metacognition may allow groups to reach more accurate judgments compared to groups exchanging object-level information only; while (2) in “wicked” environments (where confidence and judgment accuracy correlate negatively), explicit metacognition may protect groups from the large judgment errors yielded by groups using metacognitive information for individual-level learning only (implicit metacognition). With explicit metacognition, this research highlights a novel mechanism which, among others, provides a testable explanation of the often-observed finding that groups all over the world communicate to enhance common property use. (shrink)

Classical commentary on Yogasūtra of Patañjali, work on Yoga philosophy; includes complete text of Yogasūtra.

Vaishnava philosophical work, in verse; critically edited.

Selected Sanskrit works with Hindi interpretation on Jaina philosophy and doctrines.

Manual of the Advaita school in Indic philosophy.

Indian intellectuals influenced by postmoderism such as Ashis Nandy and Vandana Shiva, put local folk beliefs on a par with science. Hindu nationalists, especially members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, following the lead of the historical figure Swami Vivekananda and the contemporary Subhash Kak, have developed what they call “Vedic Science”, including Vedic astrology and Vedic creationism. Although India welcomes new technology, it has for the most part rejected the values of modern science, thus embracing a stance of what might (...) be called reactionary modernism. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Allen Carlson moves away from a purely scientific–cognitive framework for environmental aesthetics towards a ‘combination position’ based on the ecoaesthetics theorised by Xiangzhan Cheng. Carlson argues that only an aesthetics informed by ecological knowledge can offer the correct foundations for the continued relevance of environmental aesthetics to environmental ethics. However, closer analysis of Cheng's theory of ecoaesthetics reveals a number of problems related to questions of anthropocentrism and in particular, the issue of an ethic based on (...) love. In this paper, I offer an alternative approach for the future of environmental aesthetics in the form of an intergenerational aesthetics based on Indigenous and Local Knowledge (ILK). (shrink)

Commentary on Yuktyanuśāsana of Samantabhadrasvāmī, work on Jaina philosophy.

Collection of discourses on spiritual life and philosophy in Hinduism.

Elucidation of the Mīmāṃsā doctrines; includes Tantrarahasya by Rāmānujācārya and Mīmāṃsābhāṣyapariśiṣṭa of Śālikanāthamiśra.

Biography of Śaṅkarācārya, exponent of the Advaita school in Hindu philosophy.

“The day the Enlightenment went out”, is how Gary Wills described the re-election of President George W. Bush in an op-ed column in the New York Times (November 4, 2004). Reflecting upon the conservative religious vote that put Bush back in the White House, Wills wondered if there was any connection between the fact that many more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin’s theory of evolution and that 75 percent of Bush supporters actually believed—without an iota of (...) credible evidence— that Iraq was directly responsible for the terrorist attack on 9/11. Wills asks if a people that have lost respect for evidence and critical reasoning can still be called an enlightened nation. “Belief that does not require proof or evidence” is how the Webster New World Dictionary defines the word “faith”. It also defines “faith” as “faith in God”. The American elections, then, turned out to be a massive faith-based initiative in both these senses of the word. Belief and policies backed not by evidence, but by religious values wedded to an aggressive nationalism are driving American politics. In this America is not alone. India, the subject matter of much of what follows, has had its own brush with faith-driven politics in which an aggressive Hindu nationalism came to color public policies, including science education.1 The question is: how do secular democracies like the United States and India (the world’s first and the world’s largest democracies, respectively), manage to square off their official commitment to enlightened values of openness and religion–state separation with the realities of faith-based politics? How do matters of fact—that is, questions that in principle can be decided by empirical evidence—end up getting decided on the basis of religious faith. This alchemy of turning secular matters of fact into religiouscivilizational matters holds the key to understanding the democratic-populist route to religious fundamentalism.. (shrink)

We provide evidence on the effects of criminal/corrupt politicians on firm performance and investments in their constituencies. Using a regression discontinuity approach, we focus on close parliamentary elections in India to establish a causal link between election of criminal-politicians and firms’ stock-market performance and investment decisions. Election of criminal-politicians leads to lower election-period and project-announcement stock-market returns for private-sector firms with economic ties to the district. There is a significant decline in total investment and employment by private-sector firms in criminal-politician (...) districts. Interestingly, decline in private-sector investment is largely offset by a roughly equivalent increase in investment by state-owned firms. (shrink)

Exegsis of Samantabhadra's Āptamīmāṃsā, treatise on Jaina logic.

Critical edition, with autocommentary and Hindi translation of a verse work on Jaina logic.

In recent years irregular immigration has attracted increasing scholarly attention. Current academic debate casts the irregular immigrant in the role of the new political subject who acts out a right to have rights and/or as the rightless victim who is subjected to violence and abuse. However, the conception of the irregular immigrant as harbinger of political change and/or victim reifies the persistent dichotomy between inclusion and exclusion. It ignores that irregular immigrants are not by definition excluded from a normal life (...) and that numerous immigrants live in the interstices between full legal inclusion and exclusion without democratic legal order being cast to ruin. The question that underlies this essay is: What concept of law can accommodate the unauthorized presence of immigrants without reducing them to bare life, struggling to survive and/or assigning them a political agency and without taking recourse to the use of force and violence in a zero-tolerance policy? To answer this question, this article draws on what Agamben has coined the potentiality of the law and unpacks Judith Shklar’s idea of different degrees of legalism. (shrink)

SummaryThis paper explores the hypothesis that gender attitude scales are associated with contraceptive use. Four hundred male and female respondents were interviewed using a pre-tested, structured questionnaire. Analyses included comparisons of means and prevalence rates on gender equity indicators, other related factors and socio-demographic characteristics;t-tests to compare mean scores on each gender scale for wives and husbands to identify any significant differences; chi-squared tests to compare associations between individual attributes, attitudes and contraceptive use; and multivariate logistic regression to examine associations (...) between each gender scale and contraceptive use. The findings revealed that, on average, wives endorsed more inequitable gender attitudes compared with husbands on all gender attitude scales. For wives, more equitable gender attitudes were positively associated with contraceptive use. For husbands, the role of gender attitudes had no significant association with wives' reported contraceptive use. Family planning programmes that aim to challenge inegalitarian gender norms should not overlook women in their efforts since both men and women often accept and support inequality in a social system and, in some cases, it may be women's gender attitudes that most influence family planning decisions. (shrink)

Comparative study of the Yoga of Patañjali and Jaina Yoga.

On the fundamentals of Nyaya and Vaisesika philosophy.

Aṣṭāvakragītā, Hindu philosophical work; retold.

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the concept of intermediate existence in the early Buddhist theory of rebirth. The main sources investigated for this article are the Pāli canonical and commentarial literature. My main thesis is that early Buddhist discourses contain instances that suggest a spatial-temporal gap between death and rebirth known as ‘intermediate existence’, in contrast to the idea of Theravāda Buddhist theory that rebirth takes place immediately without a spatial-temporal gap. In order to prove this, I argue that the ‘one who (...) liberates in interval’ attains Nibbāna in the intermediate existence and the concept of gandhabbā in early Buddhist discourses refers to a being in intermediate existence, not to a dying consciousness, and there are indirect inferences to an spatiotemporal gap between death and rebirth in the early Buddhist discourses. (shrink)