The aim of this dissertation is to present a systematic exposition of renunciation (Samnyasa) as a philosophico-religious category within Indian tradition with special reference to Advaita Vedanta of Samkaracarya.

The Ganadbharvad is a philosophical work in which there are profound discussions of eleven salient doctrines. In each of the discussions, one vital Tattva is taken up; and Lord Mahavir discusses it in great detail and clears the doubt of each Ganadhar with the result that each Ganadhar is fully convinced of the truth of the Lord`s argument and becomes his disciple. This book has been written so that people may read it and understand the meaning of the tattvas relating (...) to the soul, the karmas, the five elements, next birth, bondage, deliverance etc. and so that they may realise the true phenomenon of this Universe, may cultivate the trust and may make endeavours to attain the liberations from samsar. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Indian Philosophy: A Very Short IntroductionHeeraman TiwariIndian Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. By Sue Hamilton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. 168.In recent years there has been a renewed interest in classical Indian philosophy; it cannot be a coincidence that at least three short books on the subject were written for the lay reader between the year 2000 and 2002, and all published by Oxford University Press: one (...) by the famous Indian philosopher J. N. Mohanty, Classical Indian Philosophy, and another by a bright, young Indian philosopher Jonardon Ganeri, Philosophy in Classical India: The Proper Work of Reason. The third volume on the topic is the book under review, Sue Hamilton's Indian Philosophy, in Oxford University Press' "Very Short Introductions" series. While Mohanty and Ganeri are formidable Indian philosophers, Hamilton was originally trained as a scholar of Buddhist religion and developed an interest in the philosophical side of India much later in her career, when she began to give courses on Indian philosophy at Kings College, London.Hamilton opens her book by invoking India's past, which contains "a long, rich, and diverse tradition of philosophical thought," but hastens to remind us that the "role of philosophizing" in India is quite different from that of the West: India's is a philosophy of "personal destiny," "spiritual quest," and not a "professional intellectual pursuit." Hamilton echoes the Orientalists of the early twentieth century when she says that "what Westerners call religion and philosophy are combined in India": in other words, philosophy in India falls short of qualifying as an "academic discipline" (p. 1). Hamilton is probably right in pressing home the popular Western misconception [End Page 482] about Indian philosophy that it is nothing but a "mystical," "magical" tradition of the East, where some "poor" Indians masqueraded as philosophers by elucidating their theory of the universe in "stories about an elephant supporting the earth and a tortoise supporting the elephant."1 Although the renowned modern Indian philosopher B. K. Matilal has tried to remove such misconceptions in one of his pioneering works, the tradition still remains.2 Matilal was not only responding to the seventeenth-century philosopher John Locke (who, incidentally, had not read any text on Indian philosophy but had only heard of the philosophy of ancient India) but was also commenting on the prejudices of some twentieth-century Western philosophers, in particular one sweeping generalization about "philosophy" by Anthony Flew.3Much water has flowed under the bridge since the time when such prejudices were warmly entertained, but the reluctance to pay due attention to rationality in Indian philosophy has not fully waned. It is a tribute to Indian philosophers like J. N. Mohanty and B. K. Matilal that Western philosophers have now begun to look at Indian philosophy beyond its "mystic" and "magical" charm.4 In her postscript (p. 139), Hamilton applauds those modern Indian scholars (read: Mohanty, Matilal, and Ganeri) who, owing to "the influence of Western ways of doing things," have tried, with the help of the Naiyāyikas and the Buddhists, to overcome Western misconceptions—for example, that Indian thought is "anything but rational"—by "promoting Indian philosophy strictly in the sense of logical argument," and thus, only in the specific sense of logic and linguistic analysis, has it come to be recognized as an "academic discipline." One must applaud Hamilton, too, for her excellent effort in covering such a large number of topics in just thirty-five thousand words!The narrative of the book throughout suggests an attempt to contrast Indian philosophy with that of the West, and more often than not Western philosophy becomes a yardstick to evaluate "the role of philosophizing" in India in its "original" and "traditional" sense, that is, "religious" and "soteriological." Hamilton does acknowledge that, as in India so in the post-Greek West, too—at least until Immanuel Kant came on the scene—philosophers, namely Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, and Hegel, mainly sought "to understand more about 'God's world'" (pp. 5-6). But the difference between the philosophy of the Christian West and that of India was that while the former tried to understand "God's world" through "rational means" the latter... (shrink)

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This article provides an Austrian overview of the inflation versus deflation debate which has captured the attention of the economics profession in the years following the US housing bust. Much of the Austrian analysis of this debate has focused on the massive expansion of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet and attendant creation of new reserves. Several Austrian economists have predicted that the creation of new reserves will cause a massive increase in inflation. The money multiplier theory, on which these predictions (...) are based, is criticized and an overview of the Austrian business cycle theory is provided to explain why banks are reluctant to issue new credit. Finally, an analysis of the politics of deflation is provided and a class theory is presented to explain why a policy of controlled credit deflation is more likely than a policy that would result in mass inflation or hyperinflation. (shrink)

Drawing upon rational choice and investor attention theories, we examine how accusations of corporate bribery and subsequent investigations shape market reactions. Using event study methodology to measure loss in firm value for public firms facing bribery investigations from 1978 to 2010, we found that total market penalties amounted to $60.61 billion. We ran moderated multiple regression analysis to examine further the degree to which the unique characteristics of bribery explain variations in market penalties. Companies committing bribery in less corrupt host (...) countries and with the involvement of compromised executives experienced greater market penalties than did other companies. After partitioning share value losses into components for regulatory penalties, class action settlements, and loss to reputation, we found that reputational penalties account for 81.8¢ of every dollar of share value loss. Omission of reputational penalties in rational choice calculus underestimates bribery costs by 4.5 times. The results suggest that firms should not underestimate the importance of market-imposed reputational penalties by merely considering regulator-imposed fines and sanctions. (shrink)

This study examines how meritocracy as a collective social imaginary promoting social justice and fairness reproduces class and caste inequalities and fosters ethical violence. We interrogate discourse of merit in the narratives of the professional–managerial class-in-making at an Indian business school. Empirically, we draw on interviews, full-text responses to a qualitative questionnaire, and a student’s poem. We describe how business school students articulate merit as a neoliberal ethic, emphasizing prudential, enterprising attitudes, and responsibility. However, this positive, aspirational façade of merit (...) masks practices of ethical violence, wherein individuals invoke an ethical principle as grounds for moral condemnation and linguistic injuries. These practices of ethical violence desubjectify disadvantaged students and result in silence as a form of inequality. We contribute to organizational research on inequalities by foregrounding ethical violence and desubjectification. We detail the possibilities of discursive agency in contesting and interrupting ethical violence. (shrink)

There are complex considerations when planning to disclose an attenuated psychosis syndrome diagnosis. In this review, we evaluate ethical, legal, and clinical perspectives as well as caveats related to full, non- and partial disclosure strategies, discuss societal implications, and provide clinical suggestions. Each of the disclosure strategies is associated with benefits as well as costs/considerations. Full disclosure promotes autonomy, allows for the clearest psychoeducation about additional risk factors, helps to clarify and/or correct previous diagnoses/treatments, facilitates early intervention and bolsters communication (...) between providers but there are important considerations involving heritability, comorbidity, culture, and stigma. Non-disclosure advances nonmaleficence by limiting stigma and stress, and confusion in a sensitive developmental period but is complicated by varying patient preferences and the possibility that, as new treatments without adverse effects become available, the risk with false positives no longer justifies the accompanying loss of autonomy. Partial disclosure balances ethical considerations by focusing on symptoms instead of labels, but evidence that laypersons may interpret this information as a pseudo-diagnosis and that symptoms alone also contribute to stigma limits the efficacy of this approach. In addition, there are notable societal considerations relating to disclosure involving conservatorship, the reach of insurance companies, and discrimination. We advocate a hybrid approach to disclosure and recommend future research aimed at understanding the effects of stigma on clinical course and a renewed focus on those help-seeking cases that do not transition but remain clinically relevant. (shrink)

Merging logic and mathematics in deductive inference-an innovative, cutting-edge approach. Optimization methods for logical inference? Absolutely, say Vijay Chandru and John Hooker, two major contributors to this rapidly expanding field. And even though "solving logical inference problems with optimization methods may seem a bit like eating sauerkraut with chopsticks... it is the mathematical structure of a problem that determines whether an optimization model can help solve it, not the context in which the problem occurs." Presenting powerful, proven optimization techniques (...) for logic inference problems, Chandru and Hooker show how optimization models can be used not only to solve problems in artificial intelligence and mathematical programming, but also have tremendous application in complex systems in general. They survey most of the recent research from the past decade in logic/optimization interfaces, incorporate some of their own results, and emphasize the types of logic most receptive to optimization methods-propositional logic, first order predicate logic, probabilistic and related logics, logics that combine evidence such as Dempster-Shafer theory, rule systems with confidence factors, and constraint logic programming systems. Requiring no background in logic and clearly explaining all topics from the ground up, Optimization Methods for Logical Inference is an invaluable guide for scientists and students in diverse fields, including operations research, computer science, artificial intelligence, decision support systems, and engineering. (shrink)

This article responds to Terry Eagleton's claim that Spivak's latest book, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, works against the intent of postcolonial criticism. Reading the work as a search for a just representational strategy, we explore the implications of Spivak's engagement with philosophy - Kant, Hegel, and Marx. As a disciplinary machine, philosophy produces Western subjects who are engendered by simultaneously including and excluding the other. Working through this production of the double location of the 'other' we suggest that systematic (...) thought is inhabited by an absence that is present within, a disturbing otherness that ultimately questions authority and stability, and opens up the question of politics and representation. Drawing Spivak into the representational problematic opened up by Lyotard, we suggest that a responsible postcolonial intervention can be performed in the difficult exergue between representability and unrepresentability. In this account, representation is open to invention, to finding new idioms for articulating otherness. (shrink)

In recent versions of professional genre analysis, context has assumed increasingly critical importance, thus redefining genre as a configuration of text-internal and text-external factors. The emphasis on text-external properties of genre has brought into focus the notion of interdiscursivity as distinct from intertextuality, which is primarily viewed as appropriation of text-internal resources. Drawing evidence from a number of professional contexts, this article explores the nature, function, and use of interdiscursivity in genre theory, defining interdiscursivity as a function of appropriation of (...) generic resources across discursive, professional and cultural practices, which, it is claimed, is central to our understanding of the complexities of genres that are typically employed in professional, disciplinary, and institutional communication. (shrink)

We examine how corporate bribery is impacted by cultural distance between multinational enterprises home and host countries, and organizational distance to core values between MNE entry modes and MNE headquarters. Tension between external and internal legitimacy helps to explain why cultural and organizational distances will affect MNE bribery. The empirical analysis used data from cross-border transactions by MNEs that were sanctioned by US regulatory officials between 1978 and 2011. We find statistical support for all hypotheses capturing main and moderating effects (...) and suggest that MNEs may be seriously risking their legitimacies from transactions in corruption-prone host countries. (shrink)

This essay deals with the manner in which Salman Rushdie’s works engage with the heterogeneous logics of ethics and aesthetics. Drawing upon the work of Jacques Rancière it is argued that Rushdie neutralizes the two by introducing what Rancière calls a dissensus in the ethical-aesthetic hierarchy. The dissensus works on a principle of ‘excess’ so that within the domain of aesthetics the ethical is pushed to its limits. The order of desire (aesthetics) and the order of knowledge (ethics) are no (...) longer seen as hierarchical and mutually exclusive categories. By examining two versions of an unpublished novel by Rushdie (‘Madame Rama’) it is suggested that Bollywood cinema functions as a mode in which the two orders come together. In this early and mercifully unpublished novel, one finds the beginnings of Rushdie’s belief that works of art are sites of ideological and ethical contestations. (shrink)

The parking of cars is a globally recognized problem, especially at locations where there is a high demand for empty parking spaces. Drivers tend to cruise additional distances while searching for empty parking spaces during peak hours leading to problems, such as pollution, congestion, and driver frustration. Providing short-term predictions of parking availability would facilitate the driver in making informed decisions and planning their arrival to be able to choose parking locations with higher availability. Therefore, the aim of this study (...) is to provide short-term predictions of available parking spaces with a low volume of data. The open parking lot provides parking spaces free of charge and one such parking lot, located beside a shopping center, was selected for this study. Parking availability data for 21 days were collected where 19 days were used for training, while multiple periods of the remaining 2 days were used to test and evaluate the prediction methods. The test dataset consists of data from a weekday and a weekend. Based on the reviewed literature, three prediction methods suitable for short-term prediction were selected, namely, long short-term memory, seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average with exogenous variables, and the Ensemble-based method. The LSTM method is a deep learning-based method, while SARIMAX is a regression-based method, and the Ensemble method is based on decision trees and random forest to provide predictions. The performance of the three prediction methods with a low volume of data and the use of visitor trends data as an exogenous variable was evaluated. Based on the test prediction results, the LSTM and Ensemble-based methods provided better short-term predictions at multiple times on a weekday, while the Ensemble-based method provided better predictions over the weekend. However, the use of visitor trend data did not facilitate improving the predictions of SARIMAX and the Ensemble-based method, while it improved the LSTM prediction for the weekend. (shrink)

In this paper, we outline the foundations of the time invariant, non-unitary covering of quantum chemistry known as hadronic chemistry, we illustrate its validity by reviewing the exact representations of the binding energies of the Hydrogen and water molecules, and present new advances.