To many Western students of India, svarāj and mokṣa have often seemed to represent two very different ideals of freedom, the former social, political, and modern; the latter individual, spiritual, and traditional. It is not surprising that the Hindu ideal of spiritual freedom is most commonly known by the term mokṣa , for it is this word that is usually listed as the fourth and supreme goal in the famous four ends of man . The first three ends, desire , (...) success , and morality , find their fulfillment within society, while mokṣa , it is generally said, takes one beyond society. It is pertinent to note, as Ingalls and others have pointed out, that mokṣa is a relatively late term, which came to be added to the older, first three goals of man. As a noun, mokṣa does not appear until the latest of the Upanisads, and then only three times, in Śvetāśvatara 6.16 and Maitrī 6.20 and 30. In addition, some orthodox schools did not accept the ideal of mokṣa for several more centuries, the Mīmāṁsā denying it until the eighth century A.D. (shrink)

In the target article, Brendel and Miller (2008) attempt to bring pragmatic insights to bear on research ethics through the approach called freestanding pragmatism that John Arras (2001) brought sq...

IntroductionIn this study, we tested a simple, active “ethical consistency” intervention aimed at reducing researchers’ endorsement of questionable research practices (QRPs).MethodsWe developed a simple, active ethical consistency intervention and tested it against a control using an established QRP survey instrument. Before responding to a survey that asked about attitudes towards each of fifteen QRPs, participants were randomly assigned to either a consistency or control 3–5-min writing task. A total of 201 participants completed the survey: 121 participants were recruited from a (...) database of currently funded NSF/nih scientists, and 80 participants were recruited from a pool of active researchers at a large university medical center in the southeastern US. Narrative responses to the writing prompts were coded and analyzed to assist post hoc interpretation of the quantitative data.ResultsWe hypothesized that participants in the consistency condition would find ethically ambiguous QRPs less defensible and would indicate less willingness to engage in them than participants in the control condition. The results showed that the consistency intervention had no significant effect on respondents’ reactions regarding the defensibility of the QRPs or their willingness to engage in them. Exploratory analyses considering the narrative themes of participants’ responses indicated that participants in the control condition expressed lower perceptions of QRP defensibility and willingness.ConclusionThe results did not support the main hypothesis, and the consistency intervention may have had the unwanted effect of inducing increased rationalization. These results may partially explain why RCR courses often seem to have little positive effect. (shrink)

Scepticism about ought simpliciter is the view that there is no such thing as what one ought simpliciter to do. Instead, practical deliberation is governed by a plurality of normative standpoints, each authoritative from their own perspective but none authoritative simpliciter. This paper aims to resist such scepticism. After setting out the challenge in general terms, I argue that scepticism can be resisted by rejecting a key assumption in the sceptic’s argument. This is the assumption that standpoint-relative ought judgments bring (...) with them a commitment to act in accordance with those judgments. Instead, I propose an alternative account of our normative concepts according to which only ought simpliciter judgments commit one to acting in accordance with those judgments. In addition to answering the sceptical challenge, the proposal offers an independently motivated account of what makes a concept normatively authoritative. (shrink)

This paper examines the general prospects for conceptual role expressivism, expressivist theories that embrace conceptual role semantics. It has two main aims. The first aim is to provide a general characterisation of the view. The second aim is to raise a challenge for the general view. The challenge is to explain why normative concepts are not a species of defective concepts, where defective concepts are those that cannot meaningfully embed and participate in genuine inference. After rejecting existing attempts to answer (...) the challenge, I propose an alternative solution. However, the solution leaves conceptual role expressivism a far less distinctive and interesting position than its proponents claim. I conclude that we should be sceptical about how much expressivists gain by appealing to conceptual role semantics. (shrink)

. Avataric evolutionism is the idea that ancient Hindu myths of Vishnu's ten incarnations foreshadowed Darwinian evolution. In a previous essay I examined the late nineteenth‐century origins of the theory in the works of Keshub Chunder Sen and Madame Blavatsky. Here I consider two major figures in the history of avataric evolutionism in the early twentieth century, N. B. Pavgee, a Marathi Brahmin deeply involved in the question of Aryan origins, and Aurobindo Ghose, political activist turned mystic. Pavgee, unlike Keshub, (...) used avataric evolutionism in expounding his nationalistic goals for an independent India. His rationale was bolstered by the idea that India was the fountainhead of all science and civilization. Aurobindo saw in avataric evolutionism a possible key to understanding the involution and evolution of the supreme spirit in the realm of matter as taught in traditional Vedanta. This material‐spiritual evolution represented for Aurobindo the necessary knowledge for the true liberation of India, transcending purely political independence. Such knowledge he also saw as the means for the spiritual liberation of the whole of humankind. The processes of involution and evolution he claimed were not in conflict with modern science, and Western evolutionary thinking seems to have inspired many of his own evolutionary reflections, even though in the end he rejected the Darwinian transmutation of species. I conclude with an overview and assessment of recent, post‐colonial Hindu assimilations of avataric evolutionism. (shrink)

Antievolution arguments of Christian and Hindu creationists often critique Darwin's metaphor of the geological record as an ill‐preserved book of life, while highlighting the problem of anomalous fossils. For instance, Bible‐based young‐Earth creationists point to anomalous humanlike prints alongside authenticated dinosaur tracks to argue for the creation of all life some few thousand years ago. But Vedic‐based ancient‐hominid creationists view the same sort of evidence as indicating the existence of all species, including the hominids, billions of years ago. I examine (...) the roots of this Hindu Vedic creationism and its recent elaboration among scientifically minded members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). Similarities in the methods and rhetorical strategies of the two creationist groups are considered, as well as the underlying motives that have brought together such otherwise disparate religious worldviews. (shrink)

Abstract This essay is a response to three review articles on two recently published books dealing with aspects of Hinduism and science: Jonathan Edelmann's Hindu Theology and Biology: The Bhāgavata Purāṇa and Contemporary Theory, and my own, Hindu Perspectives on Evolution: Darwin, Dharma and Design. The task set by the editor of Zygon for the three reviewers was broad: they could make specific critiques of the two books, or they could use them as starting points to engage in a broad (...) discussion of Hinduism and science, or religion and science in general. In my response, I first provide a fairly detailed reply to David Gosling's many critiques of my book, and in the process call into question his Advaitic conciliation of Hinduism and science. Thomas Ellis's thesis of basic incompatibility between Hinduism and science is much closer to my own viewpoint. One of the main objectives of my book was to explain and illustrate this incompatibility with specific regard to Hindu and Darwinian perspectives on evolution. In this essay I provide a few examples in support of Ellis's incompatibility thesis, encompassing both epistemological and metaphysical dissonances. Finally, I reflect upon Varadaraja V. Raman's wide-ranging exposition on the all-encompassing nature of the Hindu tradition that readily accommodates both religious and scientific quests for knowledge. Raman uses the two books only as starting points for his own thoughts, without reference to my book. I confine myself, accordingly, to a brief critique of his complementarity approach to Hinduism and science, and of his radical inclusivism that enfolds basically all philosophical positions into the warm embrace of the Hindu tradition, including even the extreme antireligious materialism of the Cārvāka. (shrink)

Recent summaries of psychologist James H. Leuba's pioneering studies on the religious beliefs of American scientists have misrepresented his findings and ignored important aspects of his analyses, including predictions regarding the future of religion. Much of the recent interest in Leuba was sparked by Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham's commentary in Nature , “Scientists Are Still Keeping the Faith.” Larson and Witham compared the results of their 1996 survey of one thousand randomly selected American scientists regarding their religious beliefs (...) with a similar survey published eighty years earlier by Leuba. Leuba's original studies are themselves problematical. Nonetheless, his notion that different fields of science have different impacts on the religion‐science relationship remains valid. Especially significant is his appreciation of religion as a dynamic, compelling force in human life: any waning of traditional beliefs does not mean a decrease in religious commitment but calls for a new spirituality in harmony with modern scientific teachings. Leuba's studies, placed in proper context, offer a broad historical perspective from which to interpret data about religious beliefs of scientists and the impact of science and scientists on public beliefs, and opportunity to develop new insight into the religion‐science relationship. (shrink)

Tools and technologies expand our capacities, including our cognitive capacities. Microscopes extend our perceptual capacities. Notebooks extend the natural limits of memory. These facts are important, for all that they are obvious. The extended cognition hypothesis wants more. Some external devices and processes are literal parts of cognitive processes themselves. When there is fast and reliable access to external data or processes, then the cognitive processes that occur uncontroversially inside the brain literally and controversially extend out into the world to (...) incorporate external structures or processes. Retrieval of an address from memory and retrieval of the same information from a notebook can both be fully cognitive processes involving fully cognitive representations. So say the proponents of extended cognition.It is an attractive metaphor. But is there any good reason to take it as literal truth? Adams and Aizawa argue that the debate on extended cognition implicates an …. (shrink)

When experienced in-person, engagement with art has been associated—in a growing body of evidence—with positive outcomes in wellbeing and mental health. This represents an exciting new field for psychology, curation, and health interventions, suggesting a widely-accessible, cost-effective, and non-pharmaceutical means of regulating factors such as mood or anxiety. However, can similar impacts be found with online presentations? If so, this would open up positive outcomes to an even-wider population—a trend accelerating due to the current COVID-19 pandemic. Despite its promise, this (...) question, and the underlying mechanisms of art interventions and impacts, has largely not been explored. Participants were asked to engage with one of two online exhibitions from Google Arts and Culture. With just 1–2 min exposure, both improved negative mood, state-anxiety, loneliness, and wellbeing. Stepdown analysis suggested the changes can be explained primarily via negative mood, while improvements in mood correlated with aesthetic appraisals and cognitive-emotional experience of the exhibition. However, no difference was found between exhibitions. We discuss the findings in terms of applications and targets for future research. (shrink)

Over the past 50 years, postmodernism has been a progressively growing and influential intellectual movement inside and outside the academy. Postmodernism is characterised by rejection of parts or the whole of the Enlightenment project that had its roots in the birth and embrace of early modern science. While Enlightenment and ‘modernist’ ideas of universalism, of intellectual and cultural progress, of the possibility of finding truths about the natural and social world and of rejection of absolutism and authoritarianism in politics, philosophy (...) and religion were first opposed at their birth in the eighteenth century, contemporary postmodernism sometimes appeals to (and sometimes disdains) philosophy of science in support of its rejection of modernism and the enlightenment programme. (shrink)

Despite its preeminent position in the just war tradition, the concept of proportionality is not well understood by military leaders. Especially lacking is a realization that there are four distinct types of proportionality. In determining whether a particular resort to war is just, national leaders must consider the proportionality of the conflict, i.e., balance the expected gain or just redress against the total harm likely to be inflicted by the impending armed action. This proportionality consideration is called jus ad bellum (...) proportionality. The second type of proportionality discussed is a continuing re-evaluation of the proportionality, taking into account the changing situation. The last true proportionality discussed is a consideration of hostile action taking during a conflict, or jus in bello proportionality. This consideration weighs the expected military gain of a particular action against the collateral damage and injuries that are expected from the act. Finally, the fourth category addressed is ‘political proportionality’, which is not a true proportionality consideration, but is rather self-interested deliberation on the possible political and military outcomes of actions. In some instances, it could be referred to as a measured response. A better understanding of proportionality in all its forms will help military leaders to give appropriate and moral advice on the potential resort to war, as well as on the conduct of military actions in war. The recent US war with Iraq in the spring of 2003 in defiance of the wishes of the majority of the UN Security Council, and especially with the potential for high noncombatant casualties in Baghdad, makes a discussion of the proper conduct of war even more poignant. (shrink)

This paper argues that there exists a collective epistemic state of ‘Broad Medical Uncertainty’ regarding the effectiveness of many medical interventions. We outline the features of BMU, and describe some of the main contributing factors. These include flaws in medical research methodologies, bias in publication practices, financial and other conflicts of interest, and features of how evidence is translated into practice. These result in a significant degree of uncertainty regarding the effectiveness of many medical treatments and unduly optimistic beliefs about (...) the benefit/harm profiles of such treatments. We argue for an ethical presumption in favour of openness regarding BMU as part of a ‘Corrective Response’. We then consider some objections to this position, including concerns that public honesty about flaws in medical research could undermine trust in healthcare institutions. We suggest that, as it stands, the Anti-Corrective Response is unconvincing. (shrink)

Critical notice of Guy Fletcher's 'Dear Prudence: The Nature and Normativity of Prudential Discourse' and Dale Dorsey's 'A Theory of Prudence'.