This paper examines John Rawls' renowned theory of justice, which outlines two principles of justice and their respective significance. It explores how Rawls' notion of equality aligns with the philosophical concept of equity, emphasizing that his call for citizen equality inherently incorporates fairness. Additionally, the paper discusses the application of Rawls' "Difference Principle" to India's reservation policy. Rawls' principles, which aim to support the worst-off in society, are reflected in India's system of reservations for marginalized groups, including backward classes and (...) differently-abled individuals, to promote equitable opportunities. However, the paper cautions that excessive reservations could limit opportunities for more privileged groups. Ultimately, it is argued that Rawls' concept of social justice has contributed to the promotion of social justice in India. (shrink)

Verse work on Yoga; presenting the viewpoint of Nātha sect in Hinduism.

The dissociation between statistical prediction and scientific explanation advanced by Bowers et al. for studies of vision using deep neural networks is also observed in several other domains of behavior research, and is in fact unavoidable when fitting large models such as deep nets and other supervised learners, with weak theoretical commitments, to restricted samples of highly stochastic behavioral phenomena.

Management research has attracted a plethora of research intending to optimize performance within and outside firms. We have seen plenty of progress in various dimensions; however, we also notice domains where the struggle still exists. This work tries to develop a theory of a hypothetical firm that goes beyond the current theories and takes inspiration from the texts of the Bhagavad Gita. We look at the theory of a hypothetical firm through the lens of the Bhagavad Gita. Precisely, this work (...) theorizes about the three aspects of a firm: leadership, governance and motivation. Governance provides a structure to business management; leaderships play a pivotal role in converting inputs to desired outputs; and motivation acts as a catalyst in any process that builds and runs the firm. Moreover, this work integrates the understanding of certain shlokas of the Bhagavad Gita for theorizing. (shrink)

The present paper investigates investor decision-making from a psychological standpoint and explores the role of consciousness and mindfulness on investors’ analytical ability and investment efficacy. A comprehensive survey instrument including sub-scales of different behavioural constructs is administered to 222 individual investors. We find evidence supporting the positive influence of cognitive capability on investment efficacy. The findings also suggest that mindfulness reliably mediates consciousness to cause an effect on cognitive capability. Higher cognitive capability will manifest in the form of detailed analysis (...) and interpretation of available information and improve stock selection, asset allocation, and market timing, thus increasing investment efficacy. A mindful investor can mitigate negative stimuli, emotional turmoil, dilemmas and distress in stock trading in a far more superior way to mediate consciousness for higher cognitive capability. The implications of the study indicate that consciousness and mindfulness-based interventions may facilitate making the investors stronger to manage difficult times and perform a careful rational assessment to eventually become successful investors. (shrink)

Contributed research papers presented at an International Seminar on "Science and Spirituality: Bridages of Understanding" held at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla in November 2016.

The identification of additional subunits of the cGMP-gated cation channel suggests exciting questions about their regulatory roles and about structure/functional relationships. How do the different subunits interact? How is the complex assembled into the plasma membrane? Divalent cations have been implicated in the regulation of adaptation. One often overlooked cation is magnesium. Could this ion play a role in phototransduction?

Description of pramāṇa (evidence) in Vaiśeṣika school of Hindu philosophy.

On Advaita philosophy on self-realization; includes Hindi translation and commentary.

The relationship between ethical ideology and job stress appears to be complex. This study is based on a model presented by Forsyth (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39:175, 1980), showing two dimensions (idealism and relativism) that play an important role in ethical evaluation and behavior. Based on a survey of 561 employees of hotel industry in India, ethical ideologies were found to be negatively associated with job stress. The data were analyzed using Pearson correlations and multiple regressions. The result (...) showed that relativism is negatively correlated with job stress. Further, it has been established that idealism and relativism interacted in such a way that there is a negative relationship between idealism and job stress when relativism is low and positive relationship when relativism is high. The findings imply that ethical ideology adversely influences the job stress in the organization. (shrink)

This study examines if, how, and when workplace spirituality promotes employee ethical voice. Specifically, it tests a mediated moderation model with psychological ownership as a mediator of the relationship between workplace spirituality and ethical voice, and moral identity internalization as a moderator of this indirect relationship. The hypothesized model was tested on two different samples from the IT (Study 1) and Hotel industry (Study 2). Study 1 adopted a cross-sectional time-lagged design to test the proposed hypotheses while Study 2 used (...) a more robust longitudinal cross-lagged design to validate the results of Study 1. The conceptual model was tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) and the results established a direct as well as an indirect effect of workplace spirituality on ethical voice via psychological ownership. However, moral identity internalization failed to moderate the effect of workplace spirituality on ethical voice through psychological ownership in both studies. The results established that workplace spirituality stimulates ethical voice through psychological ownership irrespective of the moral identity of employees. The study identifies workplace spirituality as a novel and significant predictor of ethical voice in organizations and advances the understanding of the psychological processes and contingencies of this relationship. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. (shrink)

The globalization of modern chemistry through European colonialism resulted, by the end of the nineteenth century, in the emergence of a number of parachemical knowledges. Parachemistries were bodies of non-European knowledge which came to be related to modern chemistry within particular historical milieux. Their relationship with modern chemistry was not necessarily epistemic and structural, but historical and performative. Actual historically located intellectuals posited their relationship. Such relationships were not merely abstract intellectual exercises; at a time when the practical uses of (...) modern chemistry in statecraft were growing, the existence of these rival, competing parachemical knowledges challenged modern chemistry’s regulatory deployments. Colonial locations emerged then not as mere ‘contact zones’, but as ‘zones of conflict’ where colonial chemopolitics was interrupted by the continued legitimacy and practice of parachemistries such as rasayana, kimiya, and neidan. (shrink)

3500 word interview with Tom Cochrane discussing his philosophical background, the nature of aesthetic value, the benefits of art, and aestheticism.

In this study, we develop a new theoretical framework of Coping Intelligence which examines relationships between coping strategies and organizational commitment among boundary spanning employees. We collected data from 452 boundary spanning salespeople using multiple sources. Results demonstrate that a formative model of Coping Intelligence is superior to a reflective model and that problem-focused coping contributes to CI which, in turn, is related to affective and normative commitment. Further, our more parsimonious formative model illustrates that positive problem-focused coping and negative (...) emotion-focused coping contribute to both affective and normative commitment. After controlling for gender and salespeople’s commission in separate analyses, results remain significant. We provide additional insights: Females are likely to use emotion-focused coping than males, but gender is not related to organizational commitment. Salespeople’s commission is positively related to both affective and normative commitment but unrelated to coping strategies. We shed new lights on boundary spanning employees’ Coping Intelligence and organizational commitment and offer theoretical, empirical, and practical implications to coping strategies and business ethics. (shrink)

Cognitive impairment, alterations in mood, emotion dysregulation are just a few of the consequences of depression. Despite depression being reported as the most common mental disorder worldwide, examining depression or risks of depression is still challenging. Emotional reactivity has been observed to predict the risk of depression, but the results have been mixed for negative emotional reactivity. To better understand the emotional response conflict, we asked our participants to describe their feeling in meaningful sentences alongside reporting their reactions to the (...) emotionally evocative words. We presented a word on the screen and asked participants to perform two tasks, rate their feeling after reading the word using the self-assessment manikin scale, and describe their feeling using the property generation task. The emotional content was analyzed using a novel machine-learning algorithm approach. We performed these two tasks in blocks and randomized their order across participants. Beck Depression Inventory was used to categorize participants into self-reported non-depressed and depressed groups. Compared to the ND, the D group reported reduced positive emotional reactivity when presented with extremely pleasant words regardless of their arousal levels. However, no significant difference was observed between the D and ND groups for negative emotional reactivity. In contrast, we observed increased sadness and inclination toward low negative context from descriptive content by the D compared to the ND group. The positive content analyses showed mixed results. The contrasting results between the emotional reactivity and emotional content analyses demand further examination between cohorts of self-reported depressive symptoms, no-symptoms, and MDD patients to better examine the risks of depression and help design early interventions. (shrink)

Manipulation of physical models such as tangrams and tiles is a popular approach to teaching early mathematics concepts. This pedagogical approach is extended by new computational media, where mathematical entities such as equations and vectors can be virtually manipulated. The cognitive and neural mechanisms supporting such manipulation-based learning—particularly how actions generate new internal structures that support problem-solving—are not understood. We develop a model of the way manipulations generate internal traces embedding actions, and how these action-traces recombine during problem-solving. This model (...) is based on a study of two groups of sixth-grade students solving area problems. Before problem-solving, one group manipulated a tangram, the other group answered a descriptive test. Eye-movement trajectories during problem-solving were different between the groups. A second study showed that this difference required the tangram's geometrical structure, just manipulation was not enough. We propose a theoretical model accounting for these results, and discuss its implications. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, EarlyView.

One of the important aspects of educational philosophy is that it helps to construct a comprehensive system of education. During different periods, India has witnessed various stages of development. New priorities have emerged in education with the influences of monastic scholastic, realistic, idealistic and pragmatic trends. While education institutions have evolved, there remain several gaps between the philosophical ideals proposed by educational institutions and their everyday functioning. The paper brings forth the urgent need to bridge the gaps in order to (...) attain a comprehensive philosophy of education, in principle and in action. The authors posit that the Indian philosophy of education, normatively speaking, could extend the culture and tradition of the philosophical positions of Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda. Such an approach could help in developing an integrated approach of teachers towards education and assist in strengthening their role in shaping the inner potential of a learner in a constructive manner. (shrink)

Regional food is grounded in local practices and heritage. With industrialization and post-green revolution threat to food produced within specific region and the associated knowledge has become imminent. Scholars have analyzed the revival of regional foods in different parts of the world. However, there have been limited studies focusing on the revival of regional food from the perspective of food as commons. The paper fills this gap by analyzing the efforts of Morarka-GDC Foundation along with farmers collective in Nawalgarh, India. (...) Employing the framework of commons, we examine how the foundation along with the collective is reviving Shekhawati region’s foods. We used primary and secondary sources to capture the social activities undertaken to sustain the commons. It was found that adopting organic agricultural practices helped in reviving the regional foods by creating and using stock of local resources. Further, social dilemma associated with culinary commons was avoided by creating networks between producers and consumers through _Shekhawati_ festival and Morarka Organics. These practices have resulted in rebuilding the local food system, local tourism, and intergenerational transmission strengthening the local gastronomic identity. However, linking regional food with gastronomic tourism can threaten the local gastronomic culture and survival of authentic regional food. We also find that for a sustained management of the regional foods, scaling-up plays an essential role which has further limitations. (shrink)