This chapter shows how public philosophy presents multifaceted opportunities for us not only to contemplate the ethics and politics of our food supply and food choices but also to act upon these reflections. It also discusses the role of philosophers in food activism and considers the more egalitarian possibilities of food in a post‐COVID‐19 world. Philosophy can be used to assess the ethics and power inequalities within the food industry. The aim is to expand “foodie culture” into an ethical foodie (...) culture while highlighting vegetarian restaurants and creating accessible vegetarian recipes. Food systems include animals, humans, and the ecosystem, which are embedded within neocolonialist practices of “former” colonial powers exercising economic and cultural dominion over formerly colonized nations. Food choice can be a form of activism for anyone but especially for women of color who bear the disproportionate brunt of the harms associated with the factory farming industry and climate change. (shrink)

The rationale for pesticide use in agriculture is that costs associated with pesticide pollution are to be justified by its benefits, but this is not so obvious. Valuing the benefits by simple economic analysis has increased pesticide use in agriculture and consequently produced pesticide-induced “public ills.” This paper attempts to explore the research gaps of the economic and social consequences of pesticide use in developing countries, particularly with an example of Nepal. We argue that although the negative sides of agricultural (...) development, for example- soil, water, and air pollution; pest resistance and resurgence; bioaccumulation, bio-magnification; and loss of biodiversity and ecosystem resilience caused by the use of pesticides in agriculture, are “developmental problems” and are “unintentional,” the magnitude may be increased by undervaluing the problems in the analysis of its economic returns. Despite continuous effort for holistic system analyses for studying complex phenomena like pesticides impacts, the development within the academic science has proceeded in the opposite direction that might have accelerated marginalization of the third world subsistence agricultural communities. We hypothesize that, if these adversities are realized and accounted for, the benefits from the current use of pesticides could be outweighed by the costs of pollution and ill human health. This paper also illustrates different pathways and mechanisms for marginalization. In view of potential and overall negative impacts of pesticide use, we recommend alternative ways of controlling pests such as community integrated pest management (IPM) along with education and training activities. Such measures are likely to reduce the health and environmental costs of pesticide pollution, and also enhance the capabilities of third world agricultural communities in terms of knowledge, decision making, innovation, and policy change. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that properties of cognitive/conceptual representations and formal‐logical structures of linguistic meaning can be inter‐translated, recast, transformed into one another, and so united together, even though cognitive/conceptual representations and formal‐logical structures of linguistic meaning are apparently distinct in ontology and divergent in their form or character. While cognitive/conceptual representations are ultimately rooted in sensory‐motor systems, formal‐logical structures of linguistic meaning are abstractions detached from and independent of the actualized world. This paper sketches out the foundations of (...) how representations of linguistic meaning in terms of cognitive/conceptual structures in Cognitive/Conceptual Semantics can be unified with those in terms of formal‐logical structures in Formal Semantics. This is done by recasting cognitive/conceptual representations in terms of formal‐logical structures of linguistic meaning and re‐encoding formal‐logical structures of linguistic meaning in terms of cognitive/conceptual representations. Then, these two types of semantic representations, thus shown representationally equivalent, will be related to a series of derivations across levels in neuronal networks and dynamics. The general discussion on unifying cognitive/conceptual representations of linguistic meaning with formal‐logical structures is contextualized within the broader context of theorizing in cognitive science. (shrink)

The hotel industry has been showing their responsibility towards sustainability by employing green practices in their daily operations. The area of sustainability in hospitality relates to incorporating sustainability in operations and focusing on practices like saving energy, using renewable energy, and recycling waste. The hotels are showing their commitment to sustainability indicators like social, economic, and environmental concerns and communicating about the same to their customers. With the help of sustainability measures, hotel practitioners can think beyond providing the attractive physical (...) features and create an elegant atmosphere. Sustainability can be used as an asset to improve the brand loyalty of the customers. The attitude and perception of consumers can be further enhanced with the help of indicators of sustainability. The focus of this paper is to provide an insight into the process of implementing sustainability practices in general and specifically about environmental initiatives in hospitality. In a developing nation like India, one of the driving forces for the hotel companies to start sustainability initiatives was compliance; however, now, the companies are using these sustainable practices in branding and developing a competitive advantage. (shrink)

In Nepal, live donor organ transplantation is only 14 years old with the first successful kidney transplant made in 2008 and a successful liver and bone marrow transplant made in 2016. However, transplantation of cadaveric cornea dates back to 1998. There are still no cases of animal-to-human organ transplantation in Nepal. There are stringent laws to regulate human body organ transplantation in Nepal which are amended from time to time. However, there is a racket of human traffickers who lure rural (...) people from this low-income country into the illegal organ trade. Furthermore, there is a substantial lack of awareness of organ donation among the general public. This article focuses on the stipulations of ethical, legal, and practical issues of obtaining organs procured from living and brain-dead donors that support the process of transplantation in Nepal. In addition, the article also explores the legal and practical issues of organ trafficking and organ donation awareness in Nepal on the basis of factual data and findings from other studies. (shrink)

The concept of community integrated pest management (IPM), which is well developed in Indonesia and Vietnam, was recently introduced in Nepal. However, it has not been widely practiced, due mainly to lack of financial and technical support. This study determined an individual’s willingness to pay (WTP) for community IPM training. Determinants of WTP were identified; and sample average estimates, opportunity costs of training, and probability values were used to estimate WTP for a group of households. Estimated WTP revealed that individuals (...) were in favor of community IPM, hence it could be implemented with the support of local villagers. Community IPM demand functions showed that individuals’ knowledge and awareness of pesticide pollution are crucial for implementation. The annual welfare gained by providing five days community IPM training was calculated to be US $25.23 per household. (shrink)

Modern Indian nationalist thought has dealt with political ideas such as freedom, equality, liberty, democracy, so on and so forth. The idea of freedom received enough attention on the part of most of the modern Indian political thinkers. However, the idea of freedom as envisaged by the nationalist thinkers did not receive positive response from the other stream of modern Indian thought. Dalit-Bahujan political thinkers questioned the narration of freedom as propagated by the nationalist thinkers. Nationalist thinkers aspired for universal (...) values and at the same time reaffirmed ancient religious principles. Such effort was questioned and doubted by the other thinkers of modern India. Thus, one can find different narrations of freedom, such as social, economic and political. The social categories such as caste, class and gender became bases for their narration on the idea of freedom. The ideas and arguments of B. G. Tilak, M. K. Gandhi, Pandita Ramabai, Jyotiba Phule, B. R. Ambedkar E. M. S. Namboodripad and others would help in larger understanding of the idea of freedom. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt at exploring the possibility of reconciling the two interpretations of biolinguistics which have been recently projected by Koster(Biolinguistics 3(1):61–92, 2009). The two interpretations—trivial and nontrivial—can be roughly construed as non-internalist and internalist conceptions of biolinguistics respectively. The internalist approach boils down to a conception of language where language as a mental grammar in the form of I-language grows and functions like a biological organ. On the other hand, under such a construal consistent with Koster’s (Biolinguistics (...) 3(1):61-92, 2009), the non-internalist version does not necessarily have to be externalist in nature; rather it is a matter of mutual reinforcement of biology and culture under the rubric of a co-evolutionary dynamics. Here it will be argued that the apparent dichotomy between these two conceptions of biolinguistics can perhaps be resolved if we have a richer synthesis that accounts for both internalism and non-internalism. (shrink)

The rationale for pesticide use in agriculture is that costs associated with pesticide pollution are to be justified by its benefits, but this is not so obvious. Valuing the benefits by simple economic analysis has increased pesticide use in agriculture and consequently produced pesticide-induced “public ills.” This paper attempts to explore the research gaps of the economic and social consequences of pesticide use in developing countries, particularly with an example of Nepal. We argue that although the negative sides of agricultural (...) development, for example- soil, water, and air pollution; pest resistance and resurgence; bioaccumulation, bio-magnification; and loss of biodiversity and ecosystem resilience caused by the use of pesticides in agriculture, are “developmental problems” and are “unintentional,” the magnitude may be increased by undervaluing the problems in the analysis of its economic returns. Despite continuous effort for holistic system analyses for studying complex phenomena like pesticides impacts, the development within the academic science has proceeded in the opposite direction that might have accelerated marginalization of the third world subsistence agricultural communities. We hypothesize that, if these adversities are realized and accounted for, the benefits from the current use of pesticides could be outweighed by the costs of pollution and ill human health. This paper also illustrates different pathways and mechanisms for marginalization. In view of potential and overall negative impacts of pesticide use, we recommend alternative ways of controlling pests such as community integrated pest management (IPM) along with education and training activities. Such measures are likely to reduce the health and environmental costs of pesticide pollution, and also enhance the capabilities of third world agricultural communities in terms of knowledge, decision making, innovation, and policy change. (shrink)

Does natural selection favor veridical percepts—those that accurately depict objective reality? Perceptual and cognitive scientists standardly claim that it does. Here we formalize this claim using the tools of evolutionary game theory and Bayesian decision theory. We state and prove the “Fitness-Beats-Truth Theorem” which shows that the claim is false: If one starts with the assumption that perception involves inference to states of the objective world, then the FBT Theorem shows that a strategy that simply seeks to maximize expected-fitness payoff, (...) with no attempt to estimate the “true” world state, does consistently better. More precisely, the FBT Theorem provides a quantitative measure of the extent to which the fitness-only strategy dominates the truth strategy, and of how this dominance increases with the size of the perceptual space. The FBT Theorem supports the Interface Theory of Perception, which proposes that our perceptual systems have evolved to provide a species-specific interface to guide adaptive behavior, and not to provide a veridical representation of objective reality. (shrink)

_Natural Language and Possible Minds: How Language Uncovers the Cognitive Landscape of Nature_ examines the intrinsic connection between natural language and the nature of mentality, offering to show how language can shed light on the forms of other types of mentality in non-humans.

>With assets of over US$1.0 trillion and growing, public pension funds in the United States have become a major force in the private sector through their holding of equity positions in large publicly traded corporations. More recently, these funds have been expanding their investment strategy by considering a corporations long-term risks on issues such as environmental protection, sustainability, and good corporate citizenship, and how these factors impact a companys long-term performance. Conventional wisdom argues that the fiduciary responsibility of the pension (...) funds trustees must be solely focused on their beneficiaries and, therefore, their investment criteria must be based strictly on narrowly defined financial measures. It is also asserted that well-established financial measurements of corporate performance already include long-term risk assessment through discounted present value of future flow of earnings. Consequently, all other criteria are contrary to the best interest of the pension funds beneficiaries. In this paper, we assert that, contrary to conventional wisdom, pension funds, and for that matter other mutual funds, must be concerned with the long-term survival and growth of corporations. These measures are generally referred to socially responsible investing (SRI) and when applied to corporations, it is termed socially responsible corporate conduct (SRCC). We demonstrate that current measurement of future risk assessment invariably understates, and quite often completely overlooks, these long-term risks because of the inherent bias towards short-run on the part of financial intermediaries whose compensation depends greatly on short-term results. Furthermore, there is ample evidence to suggest that these intermediaries have been engaging in self-serving practices and thus failing in their duties to serve their clients, i.e. pension funds, best interests. Because of their large holdings in the total market as well as individual companies, these funds cannot easily divest from poorly performing companies without destabilizing the companies stock and overall markets. Hence, they must opt for a strategy of emphasizing investment criteria that encourage companies to take into account long-term aspects of their operations in terms of their impact on environment, sustainability, and community welfare, to name a few. We argue that an exclusionary, and even a primary, focus on short-term financial criteria is no longer a viable option. It also calls for the pension funds to encourage greater transparency and accountability of the entire corporate sector through improved corporate governance. Thus socially responsible investing practices are not merely discretionary and desirable activities; they are a necessary imperative, which both the corporations and public pension funds, and other large institutional holders, will ignore at serious peril to themselves. Finally, the paper considers some of the recent developments where corporations have been responding to these challenges and how their actions might be strengthened through greater disclosure and transparency of corporate activities. It also makes recommendations for the pension funds to support further research in creating new measurement standards that further refine the concept of socially responsible investing as a necessary ingredient of long-term corporate survival and growth in the context of a changing economic, environmental and socio-political dynamic. (shrink)

With assets of over US$1.0 trillion and growing, public pension funds in the United States have become a major force in the private sector through their holding of equity positions in large publicly traded corporations. More recently, these funds have been expanding their investment strategy by considering a corporation's long-term risks on issues such as environmental protection, sustainability, and good corporate citizenship, and how these factors impact a company's long-term performance. Conventional wisdom argues that the fiduciary responsibility of the pension (...) funds' trustees must be solely focused on their beneficiaries and, therefore, their investment criteria must be based strictly on narrowly defined financial measures. It is also asserted that well-established financial measurements of corporate performance already include long-term risk assessment through discounted present value of future flow of earnings. Consequently, all other criteria are contrary to the best interest of the pension funds' beneficiaries. In this paper, we assert that, contrary to conventional wisdom, pension funds, and for that matter other mutual funds, must be concerned with the long-term survival and growth of corporations. These measures are generally referred to "socially responsible investing" and when applied to corporations, it is termed "socially responsible corporate conduct." We demonstrate that current measurement of future risk assessment invariably understates, and quite often completely overlooks, these long-term risks because of the inherent bias towards short-run on the part of financial intermediaries whose compensation depends greatly on short-term results. Furthermore, there is ample evidence to suggest that these intermediaries have been engaging in self-serving practices and thus failing in their duties to serve their clients', i.e. pension funds', best interests. Because of their large holdings in the total market as well as individual companies, these funds cannot easily divest from poorly performing companies without destabilizing the companies' stock and overall markets. Hence, they must opt for a strategy of emphasizing investment criteria that encourage companies to take into account long-term aspects of their operations in terms of their impact on environment, sustainability, and community welfare, to name a few. We argue that an exclusionary, and even a primary, focus on short-term financial criteria is no longer a viable option. It also calls for the pension funds to encourage greater transparency and accountability of the entire corporate sector through improved corporate governance. Thus socially responsible investing practices are not merely discretionary and desirable activities; they are a necessary imperative, which both the corporations and public pension funds, and other large institutional holders, will ignore at serious peril to themselves. Finally, the paper considers some of the recent developments where corporations have been responding to these challenges and how their actions might be strengthened through greater disclosure and transparency of corporate activities. It also makes recommendations for the pension funds to support further research in creating new measurement standards that further refine the concept of socially responsible investing as a necessary ingredient of long-term corporate survival and growth in the context of a changing economic, environmental and socio-political dynamic. (shrink)

This paper revisits the conception of intelligence and understanding as embodied in the Turing Test. It argues that a simple system of meaning relations drawn from words/lexical items in a natural language and framed in terms of syntax-free relations in linguistic texts can help ground linguistic inferences in a manner that can be taken to be 'understanding' in a mechanized system. Understanding in this case is a matter of running through the relevant inferences meaning relations allow for, and some of (...) these inferences are plain deductions and some can serve to act as abductions. Understanding in terms of meaning relations also supervenes on linguistic syntax because such understanding cannot be simply reduced to syntactic relations. The current approach to meaning and understanding thus shows that this is one way, if not the only way, of framing Alan Turing's original insight into the nature of thinking in computing systems. (shrink)

Natural language meaning has properties of both (embodied) cognitive representations and formal/mathematical structures. But it is not clear how they actually relate to one another. This article argues that how properties of cognitive representations and formal/mathematical structures of natural language meaning can be united remains one of the puzzles in cognitive science. That is primarily because formal/mathematical structures of natural language meaning are abstract, logical, and truth‐conditional properties, whereas cognitive/conceptual representations are embodied and grounded in sensory‐motor systems. After reviewing the (...) current progress, this work offers, in outline, the general formulations that show how these two different kinds of representations for semantic structures can (potentially) be unified and also proposes three desiderata for testing, in brain dynamics, the mathematical equivalence between formal symbolic representations (and their transitions), and neuronal population codes (and their transitions). (shrink)

This book focuses on moral and political education and critically engages with educational issues from a philosophical perspective. It engages with questions of moral education as well as questions about citizenship education, to address apprehensions on learning in a liberal democracy while parallelly invoking issues from within the curriculum, the school environment and teacher-student relationship. With contributions from renowned philosophers and educationists, this volume discusses themes like civic education and liberal democracy; toleration and freedom; Tagore's conception of the moral and (...) political self; key issues in moral education; cosmopolitanism, compassion, care ethics and moral purpose of schooling; to revisit and rethink some foundational questions related to education, curriculum and pedagogy. This volume will be essential reading for educationists and educators, and will be important for scholars and researchers of philosophy of education, education, teacher education and school education. (shrink)

An attempt to treat axiomatically the measurement of economic inequality.

The Interface Theory of Perception, as stated by D. Hoffman, says that perceptual experiences do not to approximate properties of an “objective” world; instead, they have evolved to provide a simplified, species-specific, user interface to the world. Conscious Realism states that the objective world consists of ‘conscious agents’ and their experiences. Under these two theses, consciousness creates all objects and properties of the physical world: the problem of explaining this process reverses the mind-body problem. In support of the interface theory (...) I propose that our perceptions have evolved, not to report the truth, but to guide adaptive behaviors. Using evolutionary game theory, I state a theorem asserting that perceptual strategies that see the truth will, under natural selection, be driven to extinction by perceptual strategies of equal complexity but tuned instead to fitness. I then give a minimal mathematical definition of the essential elements of a “conscious agent.” Under the conscious realism thesis, this leads to a non-dualistic, dynamical theory of conscious process in which both observer and observed have the same mathematical structure. The dynamics raises the possibility of emergence of combinations of conscious agents, in whose experiences those of the component agents are entangled. In support of conscious realism, I discuss two more theorems showing that a conscious agent can consistently see geometric and probabilistic structures of space that are not necessarily in the world per se but are properties of the conscious agent itself. The world simply has to be amenable to such a construction on the part of the agent; and different agents may construct different structures as seeming to belong to the world. This again supports the idea that any true structure of the world is likely quite different from what we see. I conclude by observing that these theorems suggest the need for a new theory which resolves the reverse mind-body problem, a good candidate for which is conscious agent theory. (shrink)

Medical ethics in the Indian context is closely related to indigenous classical and folk traditions. This article traces the history of Indian conceptions of ethics and medicine, with an emphasis on the Hindu tradition. Classical Ayurvedic texts including Carakasamhita and Susrutasamhita provide foundational assumptions about the body, the self, and gunas, which provide the underpinnings for the ethical system. Karma, the notion that every action has consequences, provides a foundation for medical morality. Conception, prolongation of one's blood-line is an important (...) ethical aim of life. Thus a wide range of practices to further conception are acceptable. Abortion is a more complex matter ethically. At the end of life death is viewed in the context of passage to another life. Death is a relief from suffering to be coped with by the thought of an eternal atman or rebirth. Keywords: India, Hindu, karma, conception, death CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The Lingayat movement led by Basava, Allama, Mahadevi and many others in Karnataka in the twelfth century stands as one of the important movements that challenged, protested and, to a major extent,...

Mitochondrial ATP synthesis, calcium buffering, and trafficking affect neuronal function and survival. Several genes implicated in mitochondrial functions map within the genomic region associated with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS), which is a key genetic cause of neuropsychiatric diseases. Although neuropsychiatric diseases impose a serious health and economic burden, their etiology and pathogenesis remain largely unknown because of the dearth of valid animal models and the challenges in investigating the pathophysiology in neuronal circuits. Mouse models of 22q11DS are becoming valid tools (...) for studying human psychiatric diseases, because they have hemizygous deletions of the genes that are deleted in patients and exhibit neuronal and behavioral abnormalities consistent with neuropsychiatric disease. The deletion of some 22q11DS genes implicated in mitochondrial function leads to abnormal neuronal and synaptic function. Herein, we summarize recent findings on mitochondrial dysfunction in 22q11DS and extend those findings to the larger context of schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric diseases. (shrink)

Aruna Ramachandra Shanbaug breathed her last after 42 years of being in a persistent vegetative state. Euthanasia in any form is not permitted in India and it was only in the year 2011 that a petition was filed in the court that urged the cessation of her force feeding with a nasogastric tube and the request for her peaceful death. What followed was a string of arguments and counter arguments relating to Euthanasia. The sad demise of Aruna Shanbaug is not (...) the end of an individual, but may be the end of the road for clear cut guidelines and legislation on Euthanasia in India. (shrink)

This paper approaches the question of how to describe the higher-level internal structures and representations of cognitive systems across various kinds of nonhuman (neuro)cognitive systems. While much research in cognitive (neuro)science and comparative cognition is dedicated to the exploration of the (neuro)cognitive mechanisms and processes with a focus on brain-behavior relations across different non-human species, not much has been done to connect (neuro)cognitive mechanisms and processes and the associated behaviors to plausible higher-level structures and representations of distinct kinds of cognitive (...) systems in non-humans. Although the study of (neuro)cognitive mechanisms and processes can certainly be revealing, (neuro)cognitive mechanisms and processes are underspecified with respect to internal structures and representations of non-human cognitive systems because multiple such mechanisms can target, or be mapped onto, the same internal structure or vice versa. This paper outlines a biosemiotic approach to this linking problem in order to bridge the gap between functions of (neuro)cognitive systems in different species and the higher-level cognitive structures and representations. It is contended that the higher-level internal structures and representations of various cognitive systems are biosemiotic constraints on the (biological) functions of (neuro)cognitive systems that serve to restrict the range of functions (neuro)cognitive systems have or are selected for. This turns out to have implications for issues on the convergent evolution of cognitive traits. (shrink)

This article will provide a unifying perspective on perception and cognition via the route of linguistic representations of emotion. Linguistic representations of emotions provide a fertile ground for explorations into the nature and form of integration of perception and cognition because emotion has facets of both perceptual and cognitive processes. In particular, this article shows that certain types of linguistic representations of emotion allow for the integration of perception and cognition through a series of steps and operations in cognitive systems, (...) whereas certain other linguistic representations of emotion are not so representationally structured as to permit the unity of perception and cognition. It turns out that the types of linguistic representations of emotion that readily permit the desired unity of perception and cognition are exactly those that are linguistically encoded emotive representations of everyday objects, events, and things around us. It is these ordinary objects, events and things that provide the scaffolding for task-dependent or goal-oriented activities of cognitive systems including autonomous systems. In this way, cognitive systems can be saliently tuned to the outer world by being motivated and also subtly governed by emotion-driven representations. This helps not only tie together perceptual and cognitive processes via the interface between language and emotive representations, but also reveal the limits of emotive representations in amalgamating perceptual and cognitive processes in cognitive systems. (shrink)

Climate change is considered as the global challenge in the 21st century. Anthropogenic activities have directly led to an immense increase in green house gas emissions mainly carbon dioxide that contributes mainly in the warming of atmosphere. The concentration of carbon dioxide is expected to rise twice as high as those existing in pre-industrial period, within the next century. Pesticides are the biological pollutants, which are being used by the man to kill the pests for increasing the yield of many (...) crops and insect vectors to control the spread of disease. The tremendous use of pesticides has caused severe health hazards to organisms including human beings due to climate change. Excessive use of pesticides may lead to the destruction of biodiversity. Many birds, aquatic organisms and animals are under the threat of harmful pesticides for their survival. The pesticides effects are lessen by organizing awareness program among the farmers, gave special training to them regarding consequences of pesticides, their screening and monitoring methods. (shrink)

Headteachers in the community schools are responsible for academic and administrative activities. They are considered role models for integrity practices. However, the situation is different on some occasions. For instance, political interest plays more important roles than qualifications, training, work experience, etc., in school affairs. In this context, a qualitative study was carried out in the purposefully selected two schools – an urban and a rural – to explore the elements that influence school integrity practices. Data collected from the schools (...) were analyzed and interpreted. The findings show that nepotism, unhealthy party politics, and impunity influence the school integrity practices in Nepal. (shrink)

This book examines linguistic expressions of emotion in intensional contexts and offers a formally elegant account of the relationship between language and emotion. The author presents a compelling case for the view that there exist, contrary to popular belief, logical universals at the intersection of language and emotive content. This book shows that emotive structures in the mind that are widely assumed to be not only subjectively or socio-culturally variable but also irrelevant to a general theory of cognition offer an (...) unusually suitable ground for a formal theory of emotive representations, allowing for surprising logical and cognitive consequences for a theory of cognition. Challenging mainstream assumptions in cognitive science and in linguistics, this book will appeal to linguists, philosophers of the mind, linguistic anthropologists, psychologists and cognitive scientists of all persuasions. Prakash Mondal is Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad. He is the author of Language, Mind and Computation (2014), Natural Language and Possible Minds (2016) and Language, Biology and Cognition (completed). (shrink)

This paper seeks to understand machine cognition. The nature of machine cognition has been shrouded in incomprehensibility. We have often encountered familiar arguments in cognitive science that human cognition is still faintly understood. This paper will argue that machine cognition is far less understood than even human cognition despite the fact that a lot about computer architecture and computational operations is known. Even if there have been putative claims about the transparency of the notion of machine computations, these claims do (...) not hold out in unraveling machine cognition, let alone machine consciousness (if there is any such thing). The nature and form of machine cognition remains further confused also because of attempts to explain human cognition in terms of computation and to model/simulate (aspects of) human cognitive processing in machines. Given that these problems in characterizing machine cognition persist, a view of machine cognition that aims to avoid these problems is outlined. The argument that is advanced is that something becomes a computation in machines only when a human interprets it, which is a kind of semiotic causation. From this it follows that a computing machine is not engaged in a computation unless a human interprets what it is doing; instead, it is engaged in machine cognition, which is defined as a member or subset of the set of all possible mappings of inputs to outputs. The human interpretation, which is a semiotic process, gives meaning to what a machine does, and then what it does becomes a computation. (shrink)