Leading figures in comparative philosophy and cultural studies demonstrate what the future of comparative philosophy might look like in practice.

This Book Presents A Lucid English Translation Of The Vaisesika-Sutra Of Kanada, Termed The Earliest Exposition On Physics In Indian Philosophy And The Textual Basis For The Nyaya-Vaisesika And Navya-Nyaya Systems Of Thought. The Translation Retains The Feel Of The Original Sutras Even While Conveying The Intended Meaning Accurately And With Clarity.

You cannot say “thank you” in Sanskrit. It would be ridiculous to deduce from this (as William Ward, a British Orientalist) that gratefulness as a sentiment was unknown to the ancient Indian people. It is no less ridiculous to argue that rationality as a concept is absent from or marginal to the entire panoply of classical Indian philosophical traditions on the basis of the fact that there is no exact Sanskrit equivalent of that word.

The introduction of the long-term history of the Earth into the preoccupations of historians has triggered a crisis because it has become impossible to keep the “planet” as one single entity outside of history properly understood. As soon as the planetary intruded into history, it became impossible to keep it as one naturalized background. By problematizing the planetary, Dipesh Chakrabarty has forced philosophers, historians and anthropologists to extend pluralism to the very ground on which history was supposed to unfold. Hence (...) Bruno Latour’s attempt at counting the number of “planets” whose attractions are simultaneously being felt today on any political question. Each of his eight planets are defined by the disconnect between where they are situated and where they are imagined to be moving, which means that each planet is led by a different and incommensurable philosophy of history. Such a “fictional planetology” is then discussed by Chakrabarty, who reviews the difficulties historians have had in taking the nonhuman as a historical agent and then adds to Latour’s count a new planetary body which further complicates the geopolitical situation. The result of their joint effort is to shift questions of philosophy of history to philosophy of geography. (shrink)

On theory of knowledge in Indic and modern philosophy; research papers.

When we understand that something is a pot, is it because of one property that all pots share? This seems unlikely, but without this common essence, it is difficult to see how we could teach someone to use the word "pot" or to see something as _a_ pot. The Buddhist apoha theory tries to resolve this dilemma, first, by rejecting properties such as "potness" and, then, by claiming that the element uniting all pots is their very difference from all non-pots. (...) In other words, when we seek out a pot, we select an object that is not a non-pot, and we repeat this practice with all other items and expressions. Writing from the vantage points of history, philosophy, and cognitive science, the contributors to this volume clarify the nominalist apoha theory and explore the relationship between apoha and the scientific study of human cognition. They engage throughout in a lively debate over the theory's legitimacy. Classical Indian philosophers challenged the apoha theory's legitimacy, believing instead in the existence of enduring essences. Seeking to settle this controversy, essays explore whether apoha offers new and workable solutions to problems in the scientific study of human cognition. They show that the work of generations of Indian philosophers can add much toward the resolution of persistent conundrums in analytic philosophy and cognitive science. (shrink)

A wide-ranging interview with Dipesh Chakrabarty, Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Chicago and author of The Climate of History in a Planetary Age and Provincializing Europe. Dipesh Chakrabarty is one of the leading thinkers on climate change in the humanities. He is responsible for introducing concepts like the "Anthropocene," "geological force," and "species history" into history, philosophy, and literary theory.

Daya Krishna(Photo courtesy of Jay Garfield)Govind Chandra Pande(Photo courtesy of his daughter amita sharma)Daya Krishna was the public face of Indian philosophy in the first half-century after Indian independence. Nobody on the Indian scene in that period came close to him in influence or in contribution to the profession. Nobody else in the world thought as hard or as fruitfully about the relation of Indian philosophy to that of the rest of the world, and nobody else dared to think as (...) creatively and even as heretically about the history of Indian philosophy itself. To be sure, the Indian philosophical scene during this period was always a vibrant and creative matrix of thought, and many contributed to that .. (shrink)

It has been just over 100 years since the birth of Alan Turing and more than 65 years since he published in Mind his seminal paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence. In the Mind paper, Turing asked a number of questions, including whether computers could ever be said to have the power of “thinking”. Turing also set up a number of criteria—including his imitation game—under which a human could judge whether a computer could be said to be “intelligent”. Turing’s paper, as (...) well as his important mathematical and computational insights of the 1930s and 1940s led to his popular acclaim as the “Father of Artificial Intelligence”. In the years since his paper was published, however, no computational system has fully satisfied Turing’s challenge. In this paper we focus on a different question, ignored in, but inspired by Turing’s work: How might the Artificial Intelligence practitioner implement “intelligence” on a computational device? Over the past 60 years, although the AI community has not produced a general-purpose computational intelligence, it has constructed a large number of important artifacts, as well as taken several philosophical stances able to shed light on the nature and implementation of intelligence. This paper contends that the construction of any human artifact includes an implicit epistemic stance. In AI this stance is found in commitments to particular knowledge representations and search strategies that lead to a product’s successes as well as its limitations. Finally, we suggest that computational and human intelligence are two different natural kinds, in the philosophical sense, and elaborate on this point in the conclusion. (shrink)

Governments are increasingly making use of field experiments to evaluate policy interventions in the spheres of education, public health and welfare. However, the research ethics literature is largely focused on the clinical context, leaving investigators, institutional review boards and government agencies with few resources to draw on to address the ethical questions they face regarding such experiments. In this article, we aim to help address this problem, investigating the conditions under which informed consent is required for ethical policy research conducted (...) or authorized by government. We argue that investigators need not secure participants' informed consent when conducting government policy experiments if: the government institution conducting or authorizing the experiment possesses a right to rule over the spheres of policy targeted by the research; and data collection does not involve the violation of participants' autonomy rights. (shrink)

Never before, in any anthology, have contemporary epistemologists and philosophers of language come together to address the single most neglected important issue at the confluence of these two branches of philosophy, namely: Can we know facts from reliable reports? Besides Hume's subversive discussion of miracles and the literature thereon, testimony has been bypassed by most Western philosophers; whereas in classical Indian theories of evidence and knowledge philosophical debates have raged for centuries about the status of word-generated knowledge. `Is the response (...) "I was told by an expert on the subject" as respectable as "I saw" or "I inferred" in answer to "How do you know?"' is a question answered in diverse and subtle ways by Buddhists, Vaisesikas and Naiyayikas. For the first time this book makes available the riches of those debates, translating from Sanskrit some contemporary Indian Pandits' reactions to Western analytic accounts of meaning and knowledge. For advanced undergraduates in philosophy, for researchers - in Australia, Asia, Europe or America - on epistemology, theory of meaning, Indian or comparative philosophy, as well as for specialists interested in this relatively fresh topic of knowledge transmission and epistemic dependence this book will be a feast. After its publication analytic philosophy and Indian philosophy will have no excuse for shunning each other. (shrink)

The domain of early hominin stone tool making and tool using abilities has received little scholarly attention in mainstream philosophy of technology. This is despite the fact that archeological evidence of stone tools is widely seen today as a crucial source of information about the evolution of human cognition. There is a considerable archeological literature on the cognitive dimensions of specific hominin technical activities. However, within archeology and the study of human evolution the standard perception is stone tools are mere (...) products of the human mind. A number of recent approaches to cognition challenges this simplistic one-way-causal-arrow view and emphasizes instead the functional efficiency of tools or artifacts in transforming and augmenting human cognitive capacities. As a result, the very idea that tools or artifacts are intimately tied to human cognitive processes is fast becoming an alternative within the cognitive sciences and a few allied disciplines. The present study intends to explore its implications for philosophy of technology. The central objective of this paper is to examine the dynamic and intricate tool-mediated activities of the early hominins through the lens of Don Ihde’s post-phenomenological theory of human-technology relations and Lambros Malafouris’ Material Engagement Theory. Highlighting the key points where these two research approaches, despite their subtle nuances, converge and look capable of mutually catalyzing each other, the paper attempts to show why it is important to bring these approaches together for a more refined understanding of the controversial role these stone tools played in human evolution. (shrink)

This book brings together over 25 years of Arindam Chakrabarti's original research in East-West 'fusion' philosophy on issues of epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind. Organized under the three basic concepts of a thing out there in the world, the self who perceives it, and other subjects or selves, his work revolves around a set of realism links. Examining connections between metaphysical stances toward the world, selves, and universals, Chakrabarti engages with classical Indian and modern Western philosophical approaches to a (...) number of live topics including the refutation of idealism; the question of the definability of truth, and the possibility of truths existing unknown to anyone; the existence of non-conceptual perception; and our knowledge of other minds. He additionally makes forays into fundamental questions regarding death, darkness, absence, and nothingness. Together with conceptual clarification and progress towards alternative solutions to these substantial philosophical problems, Chakrabarti demonstrates the advantage of doing philosophy in a cosmopolitan fashion. Beginning with an analysis of the concept of a thing, and ending with an analysis of the concept of nothing, Realisms Interlinked offers a preview of a future metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind without borders. (shrink)

This study examines whether microfinance institutions (MFIs) that serve women borrowers at the base of the economic pyramid are likely to adopt a written code of positive organizational ethics (POE). Using econometric analysis of operational and economic data of a sample of MFIs from across the world, we find that two contextual factors—poverty level and lack of women’s empowerment—moderate the influence of an MFI’s percentage of women borrowers on the probability of the MFI having a POE code. MFIs that serve (...) more women borrowers are more likely to adopt a POE code, especially in negative contexts (where women borrowers face poverty and disempowerment and are therefore susceptible to abuse). This study provides evidence that MFIs can build positive ethical strength in negative contexts. (shrink)

The phenomenon of consciousness has always been a central question for philosophers and scientists. Emerging in the past decade are new approaches to the understanding of consciousness in a scientific light. This book presents a series of essays by leading thinkers giving an account of the current ideas prevalent in the scientific study of consciousness. The value of the book lies in the discussion of this interesting though complex subject from different points of view ranging from physics, computer science to (...) the cognitive sciences. Reviews of controversial ideas related to the philosophy of mind from western and eastern sources including classical Indian first person methodologies provide a breadth of coverage that has seldom been attempted in a book before. Additionally, chapters relating to the new approaches in computational modelling of higher order cognitive function and consciousness are included. The book is of great value for established as well as young researchers from a wide cross-section of interdisciplinary scientific backgrounds, aiming to pursue research in this field, as well as an informed public. * Presents the latest developments in the scientific study of consciousness * Critically reviews different theoretical and philosophical explanations related to the subject * An important book for both students and researchers in designing research projects on consciousness. (shrink)

Games and Decision Making, Second Edition, is a unique blend of decision theory and game theory. From classical optimization to modern game theory, authors Charalambos D. Aliprantis and Subir K. Chakrabarti show the importance of mathematical knowledge in understanding and analyzing issues in decision making. Through an imaginative selection of topics, Aliprantis and Chakrabarti treat decision and game theory as part of one body of knowledge. They move from problems involving the individual decision-maker to progressively more complex problems such as (...) sequential rationality, auctions, and bargaining. By building each chapter on material presented earlier, the authors offer a self-contained and comprehensive treatment of these topics. Successfully class-tested in an advanced undergraduate course at the Krannert School of Management and in a graduate course in economics at Indiana University, Games and Decision Making, Second Edition, is an essential text for advanced undergraduates and graduate students of decision theory and game theory. The book is accessible to students who have a good basic understanding of elementary calculus and probability theory. (shrink)

Due to the nature of lending practices and support services offered to the poor in developing countries, portfolio risk is a growing concern for the microfinance industry. Though previous research highlights the importance of risk for microfinance organizations, not much is known about how microfinance organizations can mitigate risks incurred from providing loans to the poor in developing countries. Further, though many microfinance organizations practice corporate social responsibility to help create economic and social wealth in developing countries, the impact of (...) such CSR practices remains an underdeveloped area of inquiry. We use a normative ethics lens to develop an ethics-based CSR theory that differentiates between three forms of ethics-based CSR—virtue, consequentialist, and deontological. We argue that while all three forms can help mitigate risk, virtue ethics-based CSR is potentially the most useful form of CSR toward mitigating microfinance portfolio risk. We test our hypotheses using a sample of microfinance organizations from across the world. Our findings suggest that virtue ethics-based CSR is not just an important philosophical paradigm; it can actually help mitigate microfinance portfolio risk when implemented in practice. (shrink)

Discussion of global climate change is shaped by the intellectual categories developed to address capitalism and globalization. Yet climate change is only one manifestation of humanity’s varied and accelerating impact on the Earth System. The common predicament that may be anticipated in the Anthropocene raises difficult questions of distributive justice – between rich and poor, developed and developing countries, the living and the yet unborn, and even the human and the non-human – and may pose a challenge to the categories (...) on which our traditions of political thought are based. Awareness of the Anthropocene encourages us to think of humans on different scales and in different contexts – as parts of a global capitalist system and as members of a now-dominant species – although the debate is, for now, still structured by the experiences and concepts of the developed world. (shrink)

Besides seeing a rabbit or seeing that the rabbit is grayish, do we also sometimes see barely just the particular animal (not as an animal or as anything) or the feature rabbitness or grayness? Such bare, nonverbalizable perception is called "indeterminate perception" (nirvikalpaka pratyakṣa) in Nyāya. Standard Nyāya postulates such pre-predicative bare perception in order to honor the rule that awareness of a qualified entity must be caused by awareness of the qualifier. After connecting this issue with the Western debate (...) concerning the "myth of the given," seven distinct arguments are presented showing that the very notion of such indeterminate perception is epistemically otiose and that the Nyāya theory of perception is better off without it. (shrink)