The spread of digital technology to all parts of our lives has led to meaningful benefits, ranging from the conveniences offered by ride-sharing apps to prediction of mental health crises and track...

Rice cultivation is one of the most important agricultural activities on earth, with nearly 90% of it being produced in Asia. It belongs to the family of crops that includes wheat, maize and barley, and it supplies more than 50% of calories consumed by the world population. Its immense economic value and a relatively small genome size makes it a focal point for scientific investigations, so much so that four whole genome sequence drafts with varying qualities have been generated by (...) both public and privately funded ventures. The availability of a complete and high‐quality map‐based sequence has provided the opportunity to study genome organization and evolution. Most importantly, the order and identity of 37,544 genes of rice have been unraveled. The sequence provides the required ingredients for functional genomics and molecular breeding programs aimed at unraveling intricate cellular processes and improving rice productivity. BioEssays 28: 421–432, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Introducing the Bhagavata Purana's key themes while also examining its extensive influence on Hindu thought and practice, this collection conducts the first multidimensional reading of the entire text.

With its Vedāntic metaphysics and devotionally rich narratives, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa can provide valuable models for ecological care and preservation. Throughout the Purāṇa, we find narratives that can be harnessed in service of the environment, whether it be Kṛṣṇa battling the serpent Kāliya or Varāha lifting the Earth from the depths of the cosmic ocean. This article, however, will focus on a little-known narrative found in Book Four, namely, the Pracetās’ destruction, and eventual protection, of the Earth’s trees. The Pracetās’ (...) narrative is significant for several reasons: instead of simply venerating nature, the story demonstrates the challenge of balancing human needs and the needs of other life forms; it accords agency to the Earth by giving the forest a voice within the narrative; and it bridges the boundary between human beings and the natural world by building kinship relationships between them. This article will explore the ways in which Vaiṣṇava commentators have interpreted this episode as they attempt to negotiate the question: who has priority—humans or nature? (shrink)

Formalized by the tenth century, the expansive Bhāgavata Purāṇa resists easy categorization. While the narrative holds together as a coherent literary work, its language and expression compete with the best of Sanskrit poetry. The text's theological message focuses on devotion to Krishna or Vishnu, and its philosophical outlook is grounded in the classical traditions of Vedānta and Sāmkhya. This translation and detailed analysis of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa includes endnotes that explain unfamiliar concepts and essays that elucidate the rich debates found (...) in the Sanskrit commentaries. The book makes a central Hindu masterpiece more accessible to English-speaking audiences and more meaningful to scholars of Indian literature, philosophy, and religion. (shrink)

Approaching comparison through attention to stories of gods rather than through explicit doctrines, and in particular to stories of gods in their infancy and childhood, is an arresting proposal in comparative theology. It was this unusual character which first drew my attention to Kristin Johnston Largen’s Baby Krishna, Infant Christ. Largen’s prose is fluid and clear, and the structure of the argument is also readily apparent. And thus the work held my attention and convinced me that it is deserving of (...) review here.An introduction and first chapter offer a description of and an apology for comparative theology. Part I, comprising chapters two and three, is focused on ‘Baby Krishna,’ first recounting some of the main stories of Krishna from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, before reflecting on the significance of those stories from the perspective of understanding how salvation is conceived and experienced in those Hindu traditions for which Krishna bhakti is crucial.The fourth and fifth chapters, .. (shrink)

We developed an on-line intelligent argumentation system which facilitates stakeholders in exchanging dialogues. It provides decision support by capturing stakeholders’ rationale through arguments. As part of the argumentation process, stakeholders tend to both polarise their opinions and form polarisation groups. The challenging issue of assessing argumentation polarisation had not been addressed in argumentation systems until recently. Arvapally, Liu, and Jiang [, ‘Identification of Faction Groups and Leaders in Web-Based Intelligent Argumentation System for Collaborative Decision Support’, in Proceedings of International Conference (...) on Collaborative Technologies and Systems] earlier developed a method to identify polarisation groups. These groups, however, tend to overlap to a certain degree; each stakeholder may be a member of multiple polarisation groups to varied degrees. Quantifying stakeholders’ membership in multiple polarisation groups is an important issue in the argumentation for collaborative decision-making, which is not addressed earlier. We present a novel approach using fuzzy clustering algorithm to address this issue in this article. The method is evaluated using data sets produced from the discussions of 24 stakeholders. Experimental results indicate that our method is effective for both identifying polarisation groups and quantifying stakeholders’ degree of membership in each polarisation group. (shrink)

Individualized customer information is at the heart of on-line commerce. Using increasing amounts of customer-specific data enhances the success and value of one-to-one on-line marketing; but the extensive gathering and use of data specific to individuals also causes alarm over the loss of digital privacy, setting up a confrontation between e-commerce and society. Governments and nations, particularly in Europe, have reacted with a reliance on sweeping laws governing digital privacy protection while other nations such as the U.S. have generally preferred (...) to allow companies and industry associations to regulate themselves. This tenuous balance is under attack from both sides. In this paper, we set up a framework which incorporates the environmental context, ethical perspectives and firm-specific considerations to help firms develop a strategy for handling digital privacy concerns. (shrink)

I argue that moral principles involve the same sort of generalization as ordinary yet elusive generic generalizations in natural language such as 'Tigers are striped' or 'Peppers are spicy'. A notable advantage of the generic view is that it simultaneously allows for pessimism and optimism about the role and status of moral principles in our lives. It provides a new perspective on the nature of moral principles on which principles are not apt for determining the moral status of particular actions (...) while they may be apt, and even fundamental, to our acquisition of moral knowledge. A natural consequence of the view is variation amongst moral principles, with some regularly warranting exceptions, and some appearing arguably exceptionless. It is also argued that this generic conception of moral principles has significant advantages, as a normative model of moral reasoning, over the view of moral principles as defaults advanced in recent years. (shrink)

A prevailing thought is that generics have a covert modal operator at logical form. I claim that if this is right, the covert generic modality is a weak necessity modal. In this paper, I pr...

Libertarians are an increasingly prominent ideological group in U.S. politics, yet they have been largely unstudied. Across 16 measures in a large web-based sample that included 11,994 self-identified libertarians, we sought to understand the moral and psychological characteristics of self-described libertarians. Based on an intuitionist view of moral judgment, we focused on the underlying affective and cognitive dispositions that accompany this unique worldview. Compared to self-identified liberals and conservatives, libertarians showed 1) stronger endorsement of individual liberty as their foremost guiding (...) principle, and weaker endorsement of all other moral principles; 2) a relatively cerebral as opposed to emotional cognitive style; and 3) lower interdependence and social relatedness. As predicted by intuitionist theories concerning the origins of moral reasoning, libertarian values showed convergent relationships with libertarian emotional dispositions and social preferences. Our findings add to a growing recognition of the role of personality differences in the organization of political attitudes. (shrink)

Rather than a hatha how-to guide with asanas and step-by-step instructions, The Spiritual Roots of Yoga explains yoga’s origin and underlying philosophy. The book dives straight to the heart of the yogic tradition embodied in the figure of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, an understanding broadened through an examination of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. It then provides the framework for an accessible comparison between yoga and Christian, Buddhist, and other systems of thought. The author of several acclaimed interfaith studies, Ravi (...) Ravindra writes from a deep understanding of not only the philosophy but the context from which yoga evolved, as well as its standing within the community of religious thought and practice, offering practitioners and other spiritual pilgrims a deeper appreciation of the tradition. (shrink)

Since the end of the Second World War, the Australasian economies have fared poorly relative both to the high-income states of western Europe and North America and to the `miracle' economies strung along the Pacific coasts of Asia. This article attempts to analyze the post-war trajectories of antipodean economies in the context of the reconstruction of the world market under US hegemony after the end of the Second World War. The first section traces the rise of Japan and the emergence (...) of Pacific Asia as a consolidated nexus of densely interwoven patterns of relational networks. The second section examines how ongoing processes of capitalist restructuring undermined the Asian miracle economies. Finally, the last section seeks to analyze the causes for the disproportionately adverse impact that processes of worldwide transformation have had for the two antipodean settler states. (shrink)

A new translation of: The yoga sutras of Patanjali, the ancient Indian text which sets forth the practical and philosophical foundations of yoga, presented here with extensive commentary and spiritual exercises to assist in the practice and understanding of one's own spiritual search"--Provided by publisher.

In Xenophon’s Socratic literature, there is repeated emphasis on the utility the friends provide one another. One extended passage, _Memorabilia_ 2.6, shows that Socrates takes a good person to care about a friend both for the benefits to be gained for oneself and for the sake of the other’s welfare. Genuine friendship, for Socrates, is not transactional or self-interested but rather rooted in the mutual benefit that only good people can provide one another.

This article uses critical discourse analysis to examine how the higher COVID-19 infection rates among South Asians in general, and Punjabis more specifically, have been represented by conservative politicians and their representatives as a consequence of cultural and religious practices. Two counter-narratives are discussed. The first substitutes the negative image of the Sikh Punjabi Canadian community with a celebratory and positive view of Sikh humanitarianism and community service. The second attributes the high numbers to class attributes such as precarious jobs, (...) poverty-level wages, employment insecurity, lack of sick days, over-crowded housing, racism and lack of access to healthcare. We argue that the conservative explanation as well as the first counter-narrative reveal continuities in culturalist understandings of South Asian immigrants, albeit in slightly different ways. The second counter-narrative represents a discursive resistance by advancing a structural analysis of health and disease in immigrant communities. (shrink)

Some criticisms are offered of Barwise and Etchemendy's theory of truth, the principal one being that it violates a feature of truth called “supervenience”.

The “class play” is an annual tradition in residency training programs and medical schools that celebrates the end of the academic year. It is also a locally generated narrative that reveals important components of an institution’s values, culture, and group dynamics. Exploring the class play is a reflexive exercise that allows one to reflect on his or her professional development and place in the department in a structural, historical, and experience-near driven way. In this way, the creation of and examining (...) of the class play may be seen as an opportunity to understand and expand upon medicine’s Hidden Curriculum. (shrink)

The practice of paying prisoners to for their participation in research has long been debated, and the controversy is reflected in the differing policies in the U.S. prison systems. Empirical study of financial payments to inmates who enroll in research has focused on whether this practice is coercive. In this study, we examined whether monetary incentives have the potential to be unduly influential among fifty HIV‐positive prisoners. The majority of prisoners surveyed believed that inmates should receive some compensation for their (...) involvement in research and disagreed with statements suggesting that the offer of payment constitutes undue influence. However, a sense of potentially being susceptible to undue influence was significantly higher among participants who had spent a longer time in prison and had less education. Overall, our findings suggest that most prisoners feel that they would be able to make a decision about research enrollment that is not solely based on an offer of monetary payment. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The paper examines the ethical conception of the most well‐known and much discussed Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gītā, in the context of the Western distinction between duty ethics and virtue ethics. Most of the materials published on the Gītā make much of its conception of duty; however, there is no systematic investigation of the notion of virtue in the Gītā. The paper begins with a discussion of the fundamental characteristics of virtue ethics, before undertaking a discussion of the conceptions (...) of duty and virtue in the Gītā. The paper clearly demonstrates that (1) both duty and virtue coexist in the Gītā, and (2) the Gītā accords virtue an important place. (shrink)

North American psychiatric literature describes the current method of psychiatric diagnostic assessment as "phenomenological"; however, it is unclear what phenomenology 1 means in this context. This paper investigates the meaning and impact of some of the major philosophical and psychiatric definitions of phenomenology on contemporary psychiatric assessment. Employing a comparative analysis of selected definitions of phenomenology, this paper argues that North American psychiatric assessment does not reflect any of these definitions of phenomenology. Instead, within the context of psychiatric assessment, phenomenology (...) has taken on an idiosyncratic, clinical meaning of signs and symptoms. However, this does not mean that phenomenology has had no impact on North American psychiatry. This paper contends that phenomenology has made contributions to psychiatry, particularly in the area of psychotherapy and especially in self-psychological psychotherapy. The importance of the concept of empathy within psychotherapy is evidence of the continuing influence of philosophical phenomenology on psychiatry. This paper concludes that phenomenology can provide an important complementary perspective to the dominant methods of North American psychiatric practice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.1 (2002) 93-96 [Access article in PDF] Phenomenological Methods in Psychiatry:A Necessary First Step M. Gupta and L. Rex Kay Keywords: behavior, empathy, human science, methodology, natural science, phenomenology. WE ARE GRATEFUL to the journal for prviding the opportunity for exchange and discussion of some of the themes raised in our paper, "The impact of phenomenology on North American psychiatric assessment" and we are (...) pleased to be able to reply to the two excellent commentaries by McMillan and Morley. Both McMillan and Morley question the prospect of employing phenomenology and its methods in psychiatric assessment, and in psychiatric practice more generally. McMillan questions the utility of such a step, and Morley is pessimistic about its feasibility. We shall address each author's concerns in turn.Initially, let us restate the aims of our paper to contextualize our arguments and those made in the commentaries. First, we sought an understanding of what is meant by North American psychiatrists, working within the DSM framework, when they refer to the phenomenological approach to psychiatric assessment. To elucidate this meaning, we compared the contemporary North American usage to a small number of definitions of phenomenology, particularly those definitions that were, and are now, applied to clinical psychiatric work. Contrary to McMillan's suggestion, we did not intend to state definitively what should or should not count as phenomenological, but rather to compare North American psychiatric assessment to what typically has counted as phenomenological. Second, we sought to examine phenomenology's influence on North American psychiatric practice, particularly psychotherapy.Morley argues that such influences usually exemplify the inappropriate appending of phenomenology to psychiatric practice rather than true integration of different paradigms. Although we do not disagree with this general contention, we will argue that the deployment of phenomenological methods in psychiatric assessment is a necessary first step toward the kind of integration he proposes.McMillan makes two related but unintegrated points. First, he argues that objective, behavioral data are phenomenological, according to his broad definition of the term. Second, he proposes that, if the behavioral and the phenomenological are different, we are better off staying with the behavioral when it comes to psychiatric nosology. Let us consider these two points in succession.McMillan seeks to broaden Jasper's definition of phenomenology to include objective observations [End Page 93] as phenomenological. To this end, he distinguishes methods from aims. He summarizes Jasper's definition of phenomenology as "an empirical method for investigating 'individual psychic experience (p 55)" and claims that this is a statement of aim or objectives. He then urges us to "consider the merits of different phenomenological methodologies in terms of their success in achieving this objective" whether or not they utilize "all the methods" of phenomenology. This is much like saying that if we treat waving one's hand as a method for greeting someone, we are then free to treat the objective of the wave as one of greeting someone, and then say that anything that serves as a greeting is, by definition, a "wave." Whatever else McMillan's objective observations are, he has not convinced us that they are phenomenological, anymore than we are likely to convince you that a kiss on the lips is really just a wave.Nonetheless, it is worthwhile seeing what McMillan does with this argument. He tells us that we can "read the first-person experience from behavior in a fairly accurate and informative way." He uses the example of a father gazing at his young child and notes that it is not unreasonable to infer that he is experiencing loving and nurturing feelings. It is, indeed, not unreasonable to draw such an inference. But it is far more reasonable to infer that the father is experiencing a cacophony of feelings, including, but not limited to, love, concern, anxiety, pride, envy, hope, and sadness (Stern 1995, 18-58). If we are able to distinguish which of these feelings is dominant at any given moment—which we are—and if we are also able to track subtle shifts in such feelings... (shrink)

We are grateful to Professor Robert Koons for his excellent, and generous, review (henceforth KR) of our book The Revision Theory of Truth (henceforth RTT). Koons provides in KR a welcome guide to our RTT, and he puts forward objections that deserve serious consideration. In this note we shall respond only to his principal objection.' This objection, which is developed on pp. 625 — 628 of KR, calls into question our main thesis. As we argue below, however, the objection is (...) not successful. We should forewarn the reader that this note is not self-contained. It presupposes familiarity with RTT (primarily, Chapter 4) and with KR. The main thesis of RTT is that truth is a circular concept. We argued that the Tarski biconditionals, read as partial definitions, constitute an intensionally adequate definition of truth. In other words, if T is a predicate defined by the Tarski-style infinitistic definition (I). (shrink)

The attitude that ordinary language description of experience is in fact a description of the world is called “naïve realism.” There is an entire branch of modern Western philosophy that is devoted to critically examining the assumptions behind the everyday language we use to describe the macroscopic world in which we live and the validity of naïve realism as an adequate description of the world. This branch of philosophy is called “ordinary language philosophy.” Surprisingly, it has something in common with (...) quantum physics: insight into the inadequacy of ordinary language to describe observable reality. It is this connection between ordinary language philosophy and quantum physics that we shall explore in this article. In the process, we shall also offer a basic introduction to both basic philosophy and basic quantum theory. (shrink)

New York based Families For Freedom is among a handful of organizations that directly organize deportees and their families. Analyzing the organization’s resignification of criminalized men of color as caregivers, I argue that current deportation policies and practices reorganize care work and kinship while tying gender and sexuality to national belonging. These policies and practices severely compromise the ability of migrant communities to socially reproduce themselves. Furthermore, the convergence of criminalization and immigration enforcement renders the kinship ties of deportable men (...) illegible, and justifies their separation from their loved ones. Since FFF publicly supports men with criminal convictions, it reveals that its members become targets of deportation precisely because they do not and cannot conform to heteronormative prescriptions. (shrink)

This is a philological and critical analysis of two crucial philosophical concepts, viz., reaso and experienceâ. The study shows that, though there is no word in Sanskrit which may be taken as equivalent of Western reason and thought, such terms as tarka, yukti, nyaya, anumana, buddhi, etc., clearly capture parts or aspects of what is meant by reason and thought (Denken). Moreover, it is misleading to trans- late sruti as revelation. Construing sruti as revelation surreptitiously imports a Semitic theological concept (...) into the Vedic tradition. The case of experience is more promising because we have such Sanskrit words as anubhava or anubhuti that do translate into experience. However, experience in Western thought has acquired many shades of meaning, and the study determines in what sense the Indian anubhava captures the Western experience. Finally, the book demonstrates that Indian philosophy provides an account of the cognitive process that begins with perception and culminates in wisdom (highest experience). This whole process may be called reason, at both ends of which we can talk of experience, which places experience not in an external opposition to reason, but rather as something that belongs to it internally. Thus, the modern Western opposition between reason and experience collapses and the two toge-ther yield an integrated process of acquisition, validation, and practical application of knowledge. (shrink)

The dissertation analyzes the ontological and epistemological arguments that motivate Plato's theory of Forms. ;The first chapter explains how the word 'ontology' will be used and, in so doing, compares two ways of determining ontological commitments. ;The second chapter argues that Plato subscribes to the first of those two ways. For at 95E--103C of Plato's Phaedo, the theory of Forms is introduced in a context that is best interpreted as embodying a concern with ontological explanation. Scholars who have previously thought (...) as much have been unable to explain the passage adequately; but the reason is that they have mistakenly assumed Plato adheres to the second way of determining ontological commitments---a way that first enters the philosophical tradition with Aristotle rather than with Plato. ;The third chapter discusses the epistemological role that Plato would have the Forms play. For him, the Forms are standards by which to determine the true applications of general terms. The notion of an epistemological standard is adumbrated in the ethical discussions of the early dialogues and is given a fuller formulation in the "recollection theory of knowledge" as set forth in the Meno and Phaedo. In the latter work, the standards are for the first time characterized as Forms. ;An important consequence of the argument of the second and third chapters is that, notwithstanding the trend of much recent scholarship, the philosophical roles played by the Forms do not commit Plato to "self-predication"---the thesis that the Form Beauty, for example, "is beautiful" in the sense that the term 'beautiful' is predicated of it. In reality, Plato's ontological and epistemological arguments preclude any commitment to self-predication, and Plato is never tempted to suppose otherwise. (shrink)

Many companies are now targeting the sizeable segment of consumers in Bottom-of-the-pyramid (BoP) markets with new products to specifically address their needs. As mainstream consumers become aware of these initiatives, their views on what products may be construed as appropriate for BoP marketplaces, may influence their attitudes towards the companies engaging in BoP activities. We propose that when the mainstream consumers are culturally distant from the BoP consumers, they have less favourable attitudes towards a company marketing a hedonic product to (...) BoP consumers, compared to a utilitarian one. However, when the mainstream consumers are culturally closer to the BoP consumers, they are less likely to react negatively to a company’s marketing of a hedonic product compared to a utilitarian one. We theorize that these differences in evaluation are based on the mainstream consumers’ expectations regarding the products a company would/should target towards BoP consumers. We also examine two company characteristics (country-of-origin and profit orientation) as contingency factors affecting the attitudes of culturally close mainstream consumers towards companies engaging in BoP practices. Across two studies, we find support for our hypotheses. This research adds to a new stream of scholarship that theorizes about the permissible consumption mindset of mainstream consumers. The research also provides guidance to marketing managers and communication experts to help build favourable company attitudes and minimize any mainstream negativity towards a company’s marketing initiatives in the BoP domain. (shrink)

Kevin Dorst has recently pointed out an apparently puzzling consequence of denying epistemic luminosity: given some natural-sounding bridging principles between knowledge, credence, and indicative conditionals, the denial of epistemic luminosity licenses the knowledge and assertability of abominable-sounding conditionals of the form ⌜If I don’t know that ϕ, then ϕ⌝. We provide a general and systematic examination of this datum by testing Dorst’s claim against various semantics for the indicative conditional in the setting of epistemic logic. Our conclusion is that, regardless (...) of whether knowledge is luminous, the knowability of these conditionals is highly sensitive to the correct semantic analysis of the indicative conditional. Moreover, standard pragmatic resources can explain away the infelicity of such assertions. As it stands, the datum does not tell against epistemic non-luminosity. (shrink)

Critical analysis of the commercialization and malpractice current in the profession of medicine.

Human development can be seen as the process of giving more effective expression to human values. Modern business philosophy has a certain viewpoint or perspective on human potential based on the secular humanistic values of the west and the scientific theories on the nature of man and his evolution. We are bound to welcome the New Paradigm in Business because it opens the path for a decisive step forward in evolution from an authoritarian, mechanistic, Taylorian era to a freer and (...) a more humanistic ethos in business. (shrink)

It Studies The Historical Progression Of Aesthetics Both Indian And Western Since Ancient Times, Focussing On The Landmarks In The Course Of Its Development And Theories On Art, Beauty And Related Concepts.