Bioethics has made remarkable progress as a scholarly and applied field. A mere fledgling in the 1960s, it is now firmly established in hospitals, medical schools, and government agencies and boasts a number of professional associations and a handsome collection of journals.

This article describes how the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the higher education institutes in developing nations like India to relook at pedagogical approaches. Due to government imposing nationwide lockdown, higher educational institutes were quickly adopting to imbibe online learning medium. This research takes a qualitative thematic analytical approach to explore the facilitators and challenges to online learning from the perspectives of both learners and educators in higher education institutes. We have specifically explored the ethical and social concerns related to online (...) learning and the possible solution for the same. (shrink)

Materialism is considered to be an anathema to Indian philosophy. Despite this, Indian tradition boasts of a strong materialist trend predating the Vedas. This paper traces the proto-materialist ideas as found in the ancient Tantra and pre-classical or original Sāṃkhya. Representing the naturalistic trend in Indian philosophy, ancient Tantra identified the brain as the seat of human consciousness. The pre-classical Sāṃkhya considered matter as the primal non-intelligent or non-sentient first cause from which the universe was to evolve. It considers the (...) material cause to be self-sufficient for the purpose of producing the world; the principle of consciousness is potentially contained in the primeval matter. This paper aims to provide an overview of the Indian materialist viewpoint for multidisciplinary scholars. (shrink)

In his brief comments on “Siddhis and Psi Research: An Interdisciplinary Analysis,” Ed Kelly expresses disappointment that the paper does not mirror his worldview, which includes questioning the reality of psi—especially precognition, accepting post-mortem survival and observational evidence for macro-PK including levitation. In this brief response to Kelly, I provide arguments in support of informational psi, particularly precognition, and in favor of a physicalist, signal-based approach to psi, with brief points against the validity of micro-PK and post-mortem survival.

What is the relationship between anger and justice, especially when so much of our moral education has taught us to value the impartial spectator, the cold distance of reason? In _Sing the Rage_, Sonali Chakravarti wrestles with this question through a careful look at the emotionally charged South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which from 1996 to 1998 saw, day after day, individuals taking the stand to speak—to cry, scream, and wail—about the atrocities of apartheid. Uncomfortable and surprising, these (...) public emotional displays, she argues, proved to be of immense value, vital to the success of transitional justice and future political possibilities. Chakravarti takes up the issue from Adam Smith and Hannah Arendt, who famously understood both the dangers of anger in politics and the costs of its exclusion. Building on their perspectives, she argues that the expression and reception of anger reveal truths otherwise unavailable to us about the emerging political order, the obstacles to full civic participation, and indeed the limits—the frontiers—of political life altogether. Most important, anger and the development of skills needed to truly listen to it foster trust among citizens and recognition of shared dignity and worth. An urgent work of political philosophy in an era of continued revolution, _Sing the Rage_ offers a clear understanding of one of our most volatile—and important—political responses. (shrink)

This article intends to define a Global Spirituality Index with a holistic perspective and attempts to look at some socio-economic indicators of Spirituality. It also attempts to find a relationship between crimes, such as perceived levels of corruption and violence such as homicides, and various aspects of Spirituality.

This study attempts to compare ‘the ethical value positioning’ of students of Business and Management studies from India and Germany. A complete enumerative survey was conducted for management students using the Ethical Positioning Questionnaire of Forsyth. There were 134 respondents from India and 57 from Germany. The objective was to confer the differences in ethical positioning of students of two economically and culturally diverse nations. By the end of the research, it was constituted that both German and Indian students demonstrate (...) a high degree of Idealism and Relativism and can be qualified as situationists. Exploratory analysis of the responses resulted in extraction of four factors : Non-Violence, Individualism, Non-Consequential, and Situational value. Within the analysis, Indian students displayed a higher preference for Individualism compared to their German counterparts. This study contributes to the literature in cross-cultural ethical value positioning of young managers. This study also opens a window for future research in the factors such as educational qualification, closed social groupings, and background of the students. (shrink)

Every individual in this world seeks to achieve a healthy, wealthy, secured and blissful life as suggested by Maslow’ Need Hierarchy. A regression analysis taking Life Satisfaction Index as the dependent variable indicated rule of law, voice and accountability, regularity authority as well as economic freedom indicators as very significant predictors. In this article, an attempt has been made to understand this tridimensional concept of happiness and combining them to arrive at a Composite Index of Happiness. Efforts have also been (...) made to evaluate performance of various nations in their persistency to achieve these dimensions of happiness. Most studies have been either in direction of Subjective Well-being or Developmental Well-being. This article has been in an effort to combine both the factors and incorporating age-old values and virtues required for reaching higher realm of lasting peace, tranquility and happiness for one and all. The study shows that mental happiness has significant positive correlation with materialistic and spiritualistic happiness, perhaps for being the intermediary step, but materialistic has no significant correlation with spiritualistic happiness. (shrink)

This essay is part of a special issue celebrating 50 years of Political Theory. The ambition of the editors was to mark this half century not with a retrospective but with a confabulation of futures. Contributors were asked: What will political theory look and sound like in the next century and beyond? What claims might political theorists or their descendants be making in ten, twenty-five, fifty, a hundred years’ time? How might they vindicate those claims in their future contexts? How (...) will the consistent concerns of political theorists evolve into the questions critical for people decades or centuries from now? What new problems will engage the political theorists (or their rough equivalents) of the future? What forms might those take? What follows is one of the many confabulations published in response to these queries. (shrink)

In 1972 Angela Davis stood trial on charges of conspiracy, kidnapping, and murder before a White jury. A professor of philosophy, a Communist, and a member of the Black Panther Party, she had no reason to believe that any of the jurors were her peers. Yet, after three days of deliberation, they returned a Not Guilty verdict on each of the counts. Through an analysis of the case, this essay argues for a new approach to peerhood that defines it as (...) a combination of demographic similarities to the defendant and a worldview orientation of contestation and anticorruption that emerges from the jury’s function in the trial. Greater clarity on how these factors are important for peerhood provides insights into how jurors can best fulfill their role and what remedies are necessary to achieve a jury of one’s peers. (shrink)

Communication plays an important role in promoting sustainable consumption. Yet how the academic literature conceptualizes and relates communication and sustainable consumption remains poorly understood, despite growing research on communication in the context of sustainable consumption. This article presents the first comprehensive review of sustainable consumption communication (SCC) research as a young and evolving field of scholarly work. Through a systematic review and narrative synthesis of N = 67 peer-reviewed journal articles, we consolidated the research conducted in this field into four (...) distinct types: communication as an approach to (1) behavior change, (2) self-empowerment, (3) systems change, and (4) reflection on current discourses and practices around sustainable consumption. Our findings reveal that most journal articles focus on incremental changes in individual consumer behavior (“weak” sustainable consumption) and employ communication as an intervention tool with little reference to communication science and theory. They also reveal integration challenges arising from the disciplinary diversity and fragmentation characteristic of the research field. Future research should develop shared frameworks and terminology, diversify its foci, synthesize relevant evidence, and innovate critical perspectives that go beyond one-way business-to-consumer communication. The results of our review can serve researchers engaged in sustainable consumption communication to better systematize their efforts and contribute more effectively to changing systems of consumption in the future. (shrink)

This mini configurative review links theory of mind research with school-based social skills interventions to reframe theoretical understanding of ToM ability based on a conceptual mapping exercise. The review’s aim was to bridge areas of psychology and education concerned with social cognition. Research questions included: how do dependent variables in interventions designed to enhance child social-cognitive skills map onto ToM constructs empirically validated within psychology? In which ways do these mappings reframe conceptualization of ToM ability? Thirty-one studies on social-cognitive skill (...) with typically-developing children ages 3–11 were included as opposed to explicit ToM trainings in light of an identified performance plateau on ToM tasks in children. Intervention DVs mapped onto the following ToM constructs in at least 87% of studies: “Representation of Others and/or Self,” “Knowledge/Awareness of Mental States,” “Attributions/Explanations of Mental States,” “Social Competence,” “Predicting Behavior,” and “Understanding Complex Social Situations.” The absence of false-belief understanding as an intervention DV indicated a lack of direct training in ToM ability. A hierarchy to further organize the review’s ToM framework constructs as either skills or competences within the construct of ‘Representation of Others and/or Self’ is proposed. Implications for the conceptualization of ToM and social-cognitive research as well as educational practice are discussed, namely how school social skill interventions conceptualize skill along a continuum in contrast to the common artificial dichotomous assessment of ToM skill, yet the development of ToM can nevertheless be supported by the school environment. (shrink)

This article is a critical and appreciative interaction with Christopher Southgate's theodicy and theology of glory. I critique in particular his rejection of all dualist moves in theodicy. I question why Southgate can ascribe evil to some human actions, many of which are automatic and unconscious, but not to any other level or form of consciousness. I argue that he may rely too heavily on rational scientific categories, which are not sufficient in themselves to carry the weight of key theological (...) concepts. His use of poetry is powerful and suggestive, but in the end, he may not give it enough epistemic weight. (shrink)