Euro-American misrepresentations of the non-West in general, and in particular on Hinduism and ancient India, run deep and have far greater colonial connections than that have been exposed in academia. This book analyzes the psycho-social consequences that Indian American children face after they are exposed to the school textbook discourse on Hinduism and ancient India. The authors show that there is an intimate connection—an almost exact correspondence—between James Mill’s colonial-racist discourse and the current school-textbook discourse. The very parameters and (...) coordinates on which James Mill constructed the discourse are the ones that are being used to describe Hinduism, Hindus, and ancient India in the textbooks currently. Consequently, this archaic and racist discourse, camouflaged under the cover of political correctness, produces in the Indian American children a psychological impact quite similar to what racism is known to produce: shame, inferiority, embarrassment, identity confusion, assimilation, and a phenomenon similar to racelessness where the children dissociate from the tradition and culture of their ancestors. This book argues that the current school textbook discourse on Hinduism and India needs to change so that the Indian American children do not become victims of overt and covert racism. For the change to occur, the first step is to recognize the overarching and pervasive influence of the colonial-racist discourse of James Mill on the textbooks. For the reconstruction of the discourse to take place, the first step is to engage in a through deconstruction, which is what the book attempts. (shrink)

This is a preface to three essays on different aspects of ontological and economic debt as themes in religious ethics. It frames their contribution by arguing that debt is central to traditions of philosophical and religious ethics yet is woefully neglected as a thematic problem and problematic in contemporary iterations of these traditions. In order to situate debt as a central moral concern, it is argued that any consideration of debt must wrestle with how debt exists on two axes. One (...) is the axis of ontological and economic debt. The other is the axis of debt as an expression of mutuality and debt as a mode of domination. These axes generate deep ambiguities regarding the moral status of debt. But contemporary religious and philosophical ethics struggles to articulate, let alone address, this ambiguity due to being wedded to modern conceptions of the autonomous subject. The essay closes by setting out the themes of the three essays, the connections between them, and how they can be a catalyst for further reflection on this vital but under‐researched topic. (shrink)

The concept of mental integrity is currently a significant topic in discussions concerning the regulation of neurotechnologies. Technologies such as deep brain stimulation and brain-computer interfaces are believed to pose a unique threat to mental integrity, and some authors have advocated for a legal right to protect it. Despite this, there remains uncertainty about what mental integrity entails and why it is important. Various interpretations of the concept have been proposed, but the literature on the subject is inconclusive. Here (...) we consider a number of possible interpretations and argue that the most plausible one concerns neurotechnologies that bypass one’s reasoning capacities, and do so specifically in ways that reliably lead to alienation from one’s mental states. This narrows the scope of what constitutes a threat to mental integrity and offers a more precise role for the concept to play in the ethical evaluation of neurotechnologies. (shrink)

Religion (dharma) plays a vital role in the Hindu (Sanatana) quest for understanding and practicing harmony between nature and humanity that result into the formation of a cosmological awakening, i.e. 'transcending the universe.' The importance and applicability of such new consciousness is a sign in promoting global humanism in the 21st century, where environmental ethics and sustainability are the wheels of making the future more humane and peaceful. Arne Naess, who coined the term 'deep ecology' conceiving humankind as an (...) integral part of its environment, gives credit to Gandhi. Gandhi’s contributions help to re-awaken the human spirit to self-realisation, finally leading to revelation promoting human coexistence with nature sustainably, mostly through re-interpretation of Vedantic thought. Under the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) the ideas of Gandhi are recognised as a path that makes human coexistence stronger, feasible and co-sharedness, sustainable in peace and harmony with nature. This essay presents ecospiritual contextuality and its vitality concerning a sustainable perspective in line with Gandhi's vision and way of life. (shrink)

The stability of the power grid is concernment due to the high demand and supply to smart cities, homes, factories, and so on. Different machine learning and deep learning models can be used to tackle the problem of stability prediction for the energy grid. This study elaborates on the necessity of IoT technology to make energy grid networks smart. Different prediction models, namely, logistic regression, naïve Bayes, decision tree, support vector machine, random forest, XGBoost, k-nearest neighbor, and optimized artificial (...) neural network, have been applied on openly available smart energy grid datasets to predict their stability. The present article uses metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, f1-score, and ROC curve to compare different predictive models. Data augmentation and feature scaling have been applied to the dataset to get better results. The augmented dataset provides better results as compared with the normal dataset. This study concludes that the deep learning predictive model ANN optimized with Adam optimizer provides better results than other predictive models. The ANN model provides 97.27% accuracy, 96.79% precision, 95.67% recall, and 96.22% F1 score. (shrink)

Millions of memes are created and shared every day on social media platforms. Memes are a great tool to spread humour. However, some people use it to target an individual or a group generating offensive content in a polite and sarcastic way. Lack of moderation of such memes spreads hatred and can lead to depression like psychological conditions. Many successful studies related to analysis of language such as sentiment analysis and analysis of images such as image classification have been performed. (...) However, most of these studies rely only upon either one of these components. As classifying meme is one problem which cannot be solved by relying upon only any one of these aspects, the present work identifies, addresses, and ensembles both the aspects for analyzing such data. In this research, we propose a solution to the problems in which the classification depends on more than one model. This paper proposes two different approaches to solve the problem of identifying hate memes. The first approach uses sentiment analysis based on image captioning and text written on the meme. The second approach is to combine features from different modalities. These approaches utilize a combination of glove, encoder-decoder, and OCR with Adamax optimizer deep learning algorithms. Facebook Challenge Hateful Meme Dataset is utilized which contains approximately 8500 meme images. Both the approaches are implemented on the live challenge competition by Facebook and predicted quite acceptable results. Both approaches are tested on the validation dataset, and results are found to be promising for both models. (shrink)

I defend a relational account of difference in the moral status between fetuses and newborns. The difference in moral status between a fetus and a newborn is that the newborn baby is the proper object of ‘parental responsibility’ whereas the fetus is not. ‘Parental responsibilities’ are a moral dimension of a ‘parent-child relation’, a relation which newborn babies stand in, but fetuses do not. I defend this relational account by analyzing the concepts of ‘parent’ and ‘child’, and conclude that the (...) difference in the moral status between fetuses and newborns means one may claim abortion is morally permissible while also claiming infanticide is not morally permissible, without inconsistency between the two claims. (shrink)

A speech perception experiment provides evidence that the linguistic relationship between words affects the discrimination of their talkers. Listeners discriminated two talkers' voices with various linguistic relationships between their spoken words. Listeners were asked whether two words were spoken by the same person or not. Word pairs varied with respect to the linguistic relationship between the component words, forming either: phonological rhymes, lexical compounds, reversed compounds, or unrelated pairs. The degree of linguistic relationship between the words affected talker discrimination in (...) a graded fashion, revealing biases listeners have regarding the nature of words and the talkers that speak them. These results indicate that listeners expect a talker's words to be linguistically related, and more generally, indexical processing is affected by linguistic information in a top-down fashion even when listeners are not told to attend to it. (shrink)

In this discussion note on Michal Pruski and Richard C. Playford’s “Artificial Wombs, Thomson and Abortion – What Might Change?,” I consider whether the prospect of ectogenesis technology would make abortion impermissible. I argue that a Thomson-style defense may not become inapplicable due to the right to life being conceived as a negative right. Further, if Thomson-style defenses do become inapplicable, those who claim that ectogenesis would be an obligatory alternative to abortion cannot do so without first showing that fetuses (...) have a right to life, something that Thomson assumed rather than argued for. I also include a discussion on ethical problems concerning what to do about children born from artificial wombs put there by those who looked to terminate their pregnancies because they sought to avoid parenthood. (shrink)

Contributed research papers presented at International Conference on "Importance of Commentaries for Understanding Sanskrit Text", organized by Department of Sanskrit, University of Gour Banga, Malda on 5th-6th April 2017.

Digital capability encompasses the skills and attitudes that firms and employees need to thrive in the modern digital era. Digital capability of a firm involves the effective adoption and use of modern digital technologies such as Industry 4.0. From the individual perspective, digital capability is referred to as knowledge and skill sets of people which are essential to work in digitally enabled firms. Not many studies have been conducted to assess how digital capability can help in twin transition, that is, (...) both at individual and firm levels, and how such digital capability can help in improving profitability for the firms. There is also a lack of studies exploring how firm leadership support can enhance digital capability to improve both organizational and employee performance. In this background, the aim of this study is to assess the role of digital capability for both firm and people perspectives with leadership support as moderator. With the support of resource-based view (RBV) and literature, a research model was prepared conceptually which was later validated using PLS-SEM technique considering 348 responses from employees of different types of industries. Based on the analysis of feedback from participants in India, this study has reached a specific conclusion. Consequently, the results suffer from external validity issues which have been considered as one of the critical limitations of this study. It has been demonstrated that impacts of digital competency could improve both people and firm performance enhancing the profitability of the firms. Such enhancement of profitability is facilitated by the impact of leadership support. (shrink)

The Present Book Contains The Philosophy Of Organism Associated With The Teachings Of Prof. An Whitehead With Comparative Reference To Indian Philosophical Doctrines And Chinese Philosophy Of Change. In Part I The Author Deals With Sage Philosopher'S Conc.

This paper defends an account of moral worth. Moral worth is a status that some, but not all, morally right actions have. Unlike with merely right actions, when an agent performs a morally worthy action, she is necessarily creditworthy for doing the right thing. First, I argue that two dominant views of moral worth have been unable to fully capture this necessary connection. On one view, an action is morally worthy if and only if its agent is motivated by the (...) features of the action that make it right. On the other, an action is morally worthy if and only if its agent is motivated by the action’s rightness itself. Neither of these views captures the connection between moral worth and creditworthiness, because each view leaves room for cases of accidentally doing the right thing. Next, I develop a new account, which I call the Guise of Moral Reasons Account. On my account, morally worthy actions are right actions that are motivated by moral reasons as such. This account rules out cases of accidentally doing the right thing, thus capturing the necessary connection between moral worth and creditworthiness for doing the right thing. (shrink)

This chapter discusses some of Anscombe’s contributions to the philosophy of practical reason. It focuses particularly on Anscombe’s view of what it is to act for reasons. I begin by discussing the relationship between acting intentionally and acting for reasons in Anscombe's theory of action. I then further explicate her view by discussing her rejection of two related views about acting for reasons: causalism (the view that reasons are a kind of cause of actions) and psychologism (the view that reasons (...) are mental states like desires and beliefs). In the process, I try to show that Anscombe’s rejection of these theses does not leave us with mystery, but rather sheds light on an interesting and serious heterodox view of acting for reasons. I conclude by suggesting that though Anscombe's views have been taken sufficiently seriously by philosophers of action, they should be taken more seriously by philosophers of practical reason. (shrink)

Our concern in this paper lies with a common argument from racial discrimination to realism about races: some people are discriminated against for being members of a particular race (i.e., racial discrimination exists), so some people must be members of that race (i.e., races exist). Error theorists have long responded that we can explain racial discrimination in terms of racial attitudes alone, so we need not explain it in terms of race itself. But to date there has been little detailed (...) discussion of whether it is better to explain racial discrimination in terms of race or in terms of racial attitudes alone. Our goal is to offer a novel and detailed argument in defense of explaining racial discrimination in terms of racial attitudes alone, by attending to the neglected phenomenon of misperception discrimination, which involves differential treatment due to misperceived race. We argue that the discriminatory action in misperception cases must be explained in the same way as cases where (according to the realist) the victim’s race is accurately perceived. Thus, the victim’s actual race cannot provide the best explanation. The main upshot of our argument is that explanatory arguments from racial discrimination to realism about race fail. (shrink)

This book discusses a variety of world views that we can find to describe human relationships with the environment, and the underlying values in them. It reviews existing international legal instruments discussing some of the ethical values that have been agreed among member states of the United Nations.

The Present Book Contains The Philosophy Of Organism Associated With The Teachings Of Prof. An Whitehead With Comparative Reference To Indian Philosophical Doctrines And Chinese Philosophy Of Change. In Part I The Author Deals With Sage Philosopher'S Conc.

Are social sciences that are indigenous to the West necessarily universal for other cultures? This collection of South Asian scholarship draws on the experiences of the region to discuss this question in depth.

This study investigated the immediate effect of slow yoga breathing at 6 breaths per minute simultaneously on working memory performance and heart rate variability in yoga practitioners. A total of 40 healthy male volunteers performed a working memory task, ‘n-back’, consisting of three levels of difficulty, 0-back, 1-back, and 2-back, separately, before and after three SYB sessions on different days. The SYB sessions included alternate nostril breathing, right nostril breathing, and breath awareness. Repeated measures analysis of variance showed a significant (...) reduction in reaction time in 2-back condition immediately after ANB, RNB and BAW practices. Similarly, the accuracy was improved in the 0-back condition after RNB, and in the 2-back condition after ANB and RNB practices. These results suggest that SYB practice enhances cognitive abilities related to memory load and improves the functioning of cardiac autonomic activity, which is required for the successful completion of mental tasks.Trial registered in the Clinical Trials Registry of India. (shrink)

With special reference to Punjab, India; a study.

This book incorporates seven 'Introductions' that Hegel wrote for each of his major works: the Phenomenology, Logic, Philosophy of Right, History, Fine Art, Religion and History of Philosophy, and includes an Introduction and Epilogue by the Editors, serving to introduce Hegel to the reader and to situate him and his works into their wider context.

Bhakti is a remarkable existential tendency that shows itself in the rich expanse of the tradition originating from the Vedas. Recognized as a prize possession of the religions, philosophies, and culture of India, it has often won fascination and admiration from students of Eastern heritage. However, its nature, role, and history remain misunderstood and have not received all the attention they deserve. Its role as a gatherer of life, love, thought, and the divine is missed in its partial characterizations as (...) “Hindu devotion” or “divine love” or “theism implicit in polytheism.” Its status as a perennial thematic concept of the Indian civilization is missed when its pervasiveness is overlooked by the cultural historians preoccupied primarily with its periodic eruptions. Furthermore, the philosophical role of bhakti is missed when it is deemed as an alternative to jnana (knowledge) rather than “the living of jnana.”. (shrink)

Evolutionary theory assumed that mutations occur constantly, gradually, and randomly over time. This formulation from the “modern synthesis” of the 1930s was embraced decades before molecular understanding of genes or mutations. Since then, our labs and others have elucidated mutation mechanisms activated by stress responses. Stress‐induced mutation mechanisms produce mutations, potentially accelerating evolution, specifically when cells are maladapted to their environment, that is, when they are stressed. The mechanisms of stress‐induced mutation that are being revealed experimentally in laboratory settings provide (...) compelling models for mutagenesis that propels pathogen–host adaptation, antibiotic resistance, cancer progression and resistance, and perhaps much of evolution generally. We discuss double‐strand‐break‐dependent stress‐induced mutation in Escherichia coli. Recent results illustrate how a stress response activates mutagenesis and demonstrate this mechanism's generality and importance to spontaneous mutation. New data also suggest a possible harmony between previous, apparently opposed, models for the molecular mechanism. They additionally strengthen the case for anti‐evolvability therapeutics for infectious disease and cancer. (shrink)

India has witnessed an unprecedented rise in the production of movies around the theme of rape, especially after the 2012 BBC report of the horrific Gang-Rape of Nirbhaya in Delhi that shook the en...

The aim of this article is to return to the concept of bricolage as theorized in 1962 by the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and examine its presence and utility in the art and architectural history of the twentieth century. While Lévi-Strauss was the first theorist to present bricolage as an analogy for the creation of mythical thought among indigenous cultures, the concept has seen a wide range of conceptual, methodological and practical applications across different fields, including design, visual arts, urban (...) planning and the built environment. This article will examine the applicability of bricolage as a technical metaphor for the creative process and its relevance to artistic creation by tracing its trajectory over the course of the twentieth century. It will evaluate the significance of objects and events of ‘everyday life’ in the creative practices of contemporary artists, and draw attention to the emerging role of the architect as bricoleur or improviser, to conclude that it was the art of the ‘ordinary’ that gave creative inspiration to twentieth-century artists and architects to engage with the materiality and past experiences of the world. (shrink)

To the best of our current understanding, quantum mechanics is part of the most fundamental picture of the universe. It is natural to ask how pure and minimal this fundamental quantum description can be. The simplest quantum ontology is that of the Everett or Many-Worlds interpretation, based on a vector in Hilbert space and a Hamiltonian. Typically one also relies on some classical structure, such as space and local configuration variables within it, which then gets promoted to an algebra of (...) preferred observables. We argue that even such an algebra is unnecessary, and the most basic description of the world is given by the spectrum of the Hamiltonian and the components of some particular vector in Hilbert space. Everything else—including space and fields propagating on it—is emergent from these minimal elements. (shrink)

The Chinese rites controversy is typically characterized as a religious quarrel between different Catholic orders over whether it was permissible for Chinese converts to observe traditional rites and use the terms tian and shangdi to refer to the Christian God. As such, it is often argued that the conflict was shaped predominantly by the divergent theological attitudes between the rites-supporting Jesuits and their anti-rites opponents towards “accommodation.” By examining the Jesuit missionary Kilian Stumpf's Acta Pekinensia—a detailed chronicle of the papal (...) legate Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon's 1705–6 investigation into the controversy in Beijing—this article proposes that ostensibly religious disputes between Catholic orders consisted primarily of disagreements over ancient Chinese history. Stumpf's text shows that missionaries’ understandings of antiquity were constructed through their interpretations of ancient Chinese books and their interactions with the Kangxi Emperor. The article suggests that the historiographical characterization of the controversy as “religious” has its roots in the Vatican suppression of the rites, which served to erase the historical nature of the conflict exposed in the Acta Pekinensia. (shrink)

This essay argues that the concept of ‘racial capitalism’ can help us understand the connections between seemingly disparate parts of Voltaire’s extensive corpus of work. It contends that even though the Enlightenment’s racial politics abounded with contradictions and ambivalences, Voltaire stood out from his contemporaries. While the connections between his polygenism – the theory that humans of different races were created separately – and material investments in colonial commerce have long been debated by radical historians, this essay suggests that Voltaire’s (...) views about race’s relationship to labour were transformed by France’s colonial losses during the Seven Years’ War. (shrink)

Porter and Kramer :78–92, 2006; Harv Bus Rev 89, 62–77, 2011) introduced ‘shared value’ as a ‘new conception of capitalism,’ claiming it is a powerful driver of economic growth and reconciliation between business and society. The idea has generated strong interest in business and academia; however, its theoretical precepts have not been rigorously assessed. In this paper, we provide a systematic and thorough analysis of shared value, focusing on its ontological and epistemological properties. Our review highlights that ‘shared value’ has (...) spread into the language of multiple disciplines, but that its current conceptualization is vague, and it presents important discrepancies in the way it is defined and operationalized, such that it is more of a buzzword than a substantive concept. It also overlaps with many other concepts and lacks empirical grounding. We offer recommendations for defining and measuring the concept, take a step toward disentangling it from related concepts, and identify relevant theories and research methods that would facilitate extending the knowledge frontier on shared value. (shrink)

Conversations with The Universe: How the World Speaks to Us reveals how repetitions, coincidence and synchronicity are part of a personal conversation from the Universe, intended to provide ease and guidance. We are not alone, nor have we been creating life experiences on our own. There is a co-creative Universal Intelligence who is very much involved and continually seeking a dialogue. The problem is not so much the life challenges, but our own individual lack of communication with our co-creator.

There is significant research on the motivations and migration experiences of South Asian international students in Australia and the United Kingdom (UK); however, the employability journeys of this group are not well understood. This article addresses this gap, illuminating the specific employability challenges experienced and perceived by South Asian postgraduate international students enrolled in Australia and the UK. Drawing on qualitative research comprising semi-structured interviews with 30 South Asian postgraduate international students studying at a university in Australia and in the (...) UK, the findings highlight significant barriers to employability along four key axes: time pressures from study and adjustment issues (micro); lack of internship opportunities offered at the universities (meso); lack of culturally tailored university career services (meso) and perceptions of employers’ as well as Government policy implications (macro). Acknowledging and understanding these findings are important for universities to support South Asian international student employability experiences and graduate outcomes to remain competitive in the global job market. The findings suggest recommendations to enhance the employability of South Asian students in the UK and Australia. (shrink)

A critical interpretation of Sikh literature from a feminist perspective.