Kant's system of Transcendental Idealism may be regarded, in the contemporary philosophical perspective, as concerned with the problem whether any linguistic or conceptual system can be regarded as adequately explained in terms of the facts which the system organises. ‘ Transcendental ’ may be understood as what is ‘ non-reducible ’. Kant seems to hold that a linguistic scheme cannot be reduced to the facts which fall within the scheme, and thus it is transcendental to those facts. Formulated in such (...) terms, the Kantian doctrine does not, apparently , propound anything which is new; that facts are tailored to a linguistic scheme is pretty much a well-known doctrine these days. But then, as we shall see, it does say something new; and when we extract that novel element in it, we shall discover also the positive import in the Kantian term, ‘ Transcendental ’. (shrink)

Echoing bell hooks’s discussions on “black rage,” this article explores the politics of “Dalit rage” by juxtaposing some instances of projections of Dalits as an “angry,” “illiberal,” and “intolerant” constituency with examples of anger from Dalit literature. While these projections in “mainstream” media and caste Hindu–dominated civil society narratives often represent them as engulfed in the emotive states marked by anger, intolerance, and impatience, the instances from Dalit literature archive a “Dalit rage” that demands to be dissociated from the Nietzschean (...) category of ressentiment. Through B. R. Ambedkar’s readings of Nietzsche in Philosophy of Hinduism and Nietzsche’s readings of Manu’s Manavadharmashastra in Twilight of the Idols, this article draws a fine line of differentiation between Nietzsche’s contempt for ressentiment and Manu’s disdain for anger. “Dalit rage” occupies a distinctly different thymotic space and articulates a Dalit predicament that exploits rage as a marker of protest, resistance, and caste-ridden social conflicts. This article shows why we cannot bracket Nietzsche’s contempt for ressentiment with Manu’s demands of the sudras (and, in extension, other “lower castes”/Dalits) to be “meek” by exploring Manu’s perpetuation and legitimization of the varna order through a “morality of breeding” and Nietzsche’s more wholesale rejection of morality as he deems it a pia fraus (moral fraud). Thus this “Dalit rage” offers us a repository of the limits of a liberal democracy and enables an Ambedkarite reading of Nietzsche whose project of constructing ubermensch is markedly different from Manu’s “morality of taming” through a “morality of breeding.”. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to propose new similarity measures namely rough variational coefficient similarity measure under the rough neutrosophic environment. The weighted rough variational coefficient similarity measure has been also defined. The weighted rough variational coefficient similarity measures between the rough ideal alternative and each alternative are xxxxx calculated to find the best alternative. The ranking order of all the alternatives can be determined by using the numerical values of similarity measures. Finally, an illustrative example has been provided (...) to show the effectiveness and validity of the proposed approach. Comparisons of decision results of existing rough similarity measures have been provided. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to present Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method for multi-attribute group decision making under rough neutrosophic environment. The concept of rough neutrosophic set is a powerful mathematical tool to deal with uncertainty, indeterminacy and inconsistency. In this paper, a new approach for multi-attribute group decision making problems is proposed by extending the TOPSIS method under rough neutrosophic environment. Rough neutrosophic set is characterized by the upper and lower approximation operators and the (...) pair of neutrosophic sets that are characterized by truth-membership degree, indeterminacy membership degree, and falsity membership degree. In the decision situation, ratings of alternatives with respect to each attribute are characterized by rough neutrosophic sets that reflect the decision makers’ opinion. Rough neutrosophic weighted averaging operator has been used to aggregate the individual decision maker’s opinion into group opinion for rating the importance of attributes and alternatives. Finally, a numerical example has been provided to demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed approach. (shrink)

This study develops and tests an integrated model that explains how Schwartz’s higher order personal values of Openness to Change, Conservation, Self-Transcendence and Self-Enhancement influence the ethical behavior of accountants. The study further explores the influence of ethics training, gender and religiosity on ethical behavior. A survey instrument was administered to 252 accounting students and the findings reveal that some of the higher order personal values are significant in explaining the ethical behavior of accounting students. The findings also reveal that (...) gender and ethical training influence ethical behavior, and that effect of the personal value Self-Transcendence differs depending on participant gender and also religiosity. The implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

Study on the life and Hindu philosophical works of Hãsarāja Svāmī, 1805-1856, Marathi writer.

This essay elaborates a magical realist reading of urban dispossession and the displacement of slum dwellers in contemporary New Delhi. More generally it argues that realist descriptions of the magical and magical descriptions of the real can help us sense and engage the multiple, fractured temporalities of the postcolonial city. The essay foregrounds an impending slum demolition in postcolonial Delhi’s famous magicians’ ghetto in the heart of the city, excavating a concept of ‘moving slums’ from Salman Rushdie’s classic magical realist (...) text Midnight’s Children. The interpretive concept of ‘moving slums’ describes the precarious temporality of slum demolition and re-settlement in postcolonial Delhi, juxtaposing dominant urbanist ideologies with everyday experiences and narratives of urban change. In societies deeply marked by the historical violence of uneven development, moving slums index the haunted morphology of the postcolonial city. (shrink)

We develop and use an integrated individual-level model to explain the driving forces behind digital piracy practice in two nations. The proposed model combines the Norm Activation model and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology models. This study also explores the effect of culture on intention to practice DP in two nations: US and India. A survey instrument was used to collect data from 231 US and 331 Indian participants. Use of the integrated model proves to be a (...) powerful and a viable approach to understanding DP across cultures. In each nation, all 10 path coefficients on the research model are statistically significant thereby establishing the fact that personal norm, together with other factors, influences INT to engage in DP, which in turn, may influence the actual practice. The results reveal a support for cross-cultural generalizability and applicability of the proposed model. Culture clearly plays a strong moderating role in two out of the three paths tested. The implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

Business and Society Review, Volume 127, Issue 2, Page 437-460, Summer 2022.

This special half-issue is inspired by a passage by Indian writer, educator, and utopian experimenter Rabindranath Tagore in his The Religion of Man, which Tagore first delivered in 1930 as the Hibbert Lectures at the University of Oxford:Man, in his mission to create himself, tries to develop in his mind an image of his truth according to an idea which he believes to be universal, and is sure that any expression given to it will persist through all time... This ideal (...) life dwells in the prospective memory of the future.The set of four articles in this issue is particularly focused on transcultural utopian imagination with nodal point in South Asia, with the transnational space of Bengal (spanning the... (shrink)

The authors found correspondence of several significant traits of Jewish mysticism with traits of Buddhism and other systems of Indian religion and philosophy in the literature. Among the corresponding traits is the fundamental idea of emptiness or nothingness, shuunyataa in Sanskrit, ayin in Hebrew. Also corresponding are attempts to harmonise the idea and experience of emptiness with fullness, and with the experience of the secular world with its many things and concepts. They list eight significant traits of Jewish mysticism, which (...) are found to correspond with traits of Indian religion-philosophies. This is of course a study in comparative religion, but some important relations between these Indian and Jewish belief systems with modern science are also discussed. (shrink)

In the literature we have found correspondence of several significant traits of Jewish mysticism with traits of Buddhism and other systems of Indian religion-philosophy. Among the corresponding traits is the fundamental idea of emptiness or nothingness, shuunyataa in Sanskrit, ayin in Hebrew. Also corresponding are attempts to harmonize the idea and experience of emptiness with fullness, and with the experience of the secular world with its many things and concepts. We list eight significant traits of Jewish mysticism, which we find (...) correspond with traits of Indian religion-philosophies. We also discuss some important relations of these Indian and Jewish belief systems with modern science. We contend, that natural science is built on spontaneous sensory experiences; on this basis concepts and theories are constructed. Likewise we think, that spiritual experiences occur spontaneously and contribute to the basis of religious, mystic and some philosophical belief systems. We thus think, there are important parallels between scientific and spiritual cognition. Key words: Comparative religion; Emptiness/fullness; nothingness; God; compassion; reincarnation; cognition, scientific spiritual; spiritual experiences; Buddhism. (shrink)

Despite the growing interest in understanding the effects of income inequality on economic growth, the influence of entrepreneurship-related institutional constraints on the inequality–growth association remains less understood. Drawing on an institutional constraints perspective in the context of startup entry regulation and credit constraints, we propose that under increasing income inequality, ease of startup or access to credit from the financial sector is positively associated with per capita economic growth. In a sample of 92 countries, robust to alternate specifications, we find (...) support for our hypotheses. Our findings contribute to the debates about the income inequality–growth nexus and imply potential policy interventions in the form of lower startup regulations and domestic credit provision from the financial sector to enhance economic growth under increasing economic inequality. (shrink)

Absent mistake or misrepresentation, most scholars assume that parties who agree to contract do so voluntarily. Scholars tend further to regard that choice as an important exercise in moral agency. Hanoch Dagan and Michael Heller are right to question the quality of our choices. Where the fundamental contours of the transaction are legally determined, parties have little opportunity to exercise autonomous choice over the terms on which they deal with others. To the extent that our choices in contract do not (...) reflect our individual moral constitutions — our values, virtues, vices, the set of reasons we reject and the set of reasons we endorse — we are not justified in regulating contracts reluctantly. Contracts are entitled to the privilege of liberal regulatory deference only to the extent that they are the work product of individual autonomy. The assumption that contract is voluntary does enormous work in most normative theories of contract. This Article takes still more seriously the obstacles to autonomous choice that contracting parties face. The most important constraints are not in contract law itself but in the material and moral imperatives that dictate parties’ contracting preferences. Many contracts are driven by circumstantial considerations or actual background obligations. While these contracts are not wholly lacking in the element of voluntariness, we should distinguish them from those choices — and those contracts — which more fully realize our potential to self-consciously author our relations with others. Autonomous choice in contract requires more than Dagan and Heller imply, and it is likely beyond the power of contract law standing alone to deliver it. (shrink)

Quantification, Negation, and Focus: Challenges at the Conceptual-Intentional Semantic Interface Tista Bagchi National Institute of Science, Technology, and Development Studies (NISTADS) and the University of Delhi Since the proposal of Logical Form (LF) was put forward by Robert May in his 1977 MIT doctoral dissertation and was subsequently adopted into the overall architecture of language as conceived under Government-Binding Theory (Chomsky 1981), there has been a steady research effort to determine the nature of LF in language in light of (...) structurally diverse languages around the world, which has ultimately contributed to the reinterpretation of LF as a Conceptual-Intentional (C-I) interface level between the computational syntactic component of the faculty of language and one or more interpretive faculties of the human mind. While this has opened up further possibilities of research in phenomena such as quantifier scope and scope interactions between negation, quantification, and focus, it has also given rise to a few real challenges to linguistic theory as well. Some of these are: (i) the split between lexical meaning – a matter supposedly belonging to the phase-wise selection of lexical arrays – and issues of semantic interpretation that arise purely from binding and scope phenomena (Mukherji 2010); (ii) partially relatedly, the level at which theta role assignment can be argued to take place, an issue that is taken up by me in Bagchi (2007); and (iii) how supposedly “pure” scopal phenomena relating to quantifiers, negation, and emphasizing expressions such as only and even (comparable to, e.g., Urdu/Hindi hii and bhii, Bangla –i and –o) also have dimensions of both focus and discourse reference. While recognizing all of these challenges, this talk aims to highlight particularly challenge (iii), both in terms of scholarship in the past and for the rich prospects for research on languages of south Asia with the semantics of quantification, negation, and focus in view. The scholarship of the past that I seek to relate this issue to is where, parallel to (and largely independently of) the research on LF that had been happening, Barwise and Cooper were developing their influential view of noun phrases as generalized quantifiers, culminating in their key 1981 article “Generalized Quantifiers and Natural Language” while, independently, McCawley, in his 1981 book Everything that Linguists have Always Wanted to Know about Logic, established through argumentation that all noun phrases semantically behave like generalized quantified expressions (further elaborated by him in the second – 1994 – revised edition of his book). I seek to demonstrate, based on limited data analysis from selected languages of south Asia, that our current understanding of quantification, negation, and focus under the Minimalist view owes something significant to the two major, but now largely marginalized, works of scholarship, and that for the way forward it is essential to adopt a more formal-semantic approach as adopted by them and also by later works such as Denis Bouchard’s (1995) The Semantics of Syntax, Mats Rooth’s work on focus (e.g., Rooth 1996, “Focus” in Shalom Lappin’s Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory), Heim and Kratzer’s Semantics in Generative Grammar (1998), and Yoad Winter’s (2002) Linguistic Inquiry article on semantic number, to cite just a few instances. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Indian Science Fiction: Patterns, History and Hybridity by Suparno BanerjeeBarnita BagchiSuparno Banerjee. Indian Science Fiction: Patterns, History and Hybridity. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2020. xiii + 256 pp. E-book, ISBN 9781786836670.Suparno Banerjee’s monograph examines science fiction (henceforth SF) from India, a country that has a rich and fascinating tradition of SF. This is a book that will be of interest and value to scholars and students in (...) higher education of utopia, dystopia, and speculative fiction, and to readers across disciplines interested in SF as a mode. It is quite clear today that Darko Suvin’s canonical definition of SF as cognitive estrangement, an interplay between the familiar and the strange, and its emphasis on the novum that is created in SF, has been enriched with further attention to context, including postcolonial contexts. Whose familiarity in cognition are we speaking about, and what happens when contexts are not necessarily hegemonic Anglo-American or Western ones? Indeed, even in Western contexts, science is not a given, but an element that always has political, historical, and ideological overtones. The novum, too, as with the term utopia, is moored in the contexts of the text.Banerjee’s book is one among several excellent monographs on Indian SF that have been published in the 2020s: Sami Ahmad Khan’s Star Warriors of the Modern Raj: Materiality, Mythology and Technology of Indian Science Fiction (2021) and Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee’s Final Frontiers: Science Fiction and Techno-Science in Non-Aligned India (2020) come to mind. Khan adopts a refreshing fan’s guide to Indian SF register in his monograph, discussing mythology, materiality, ideology, and technology, and he coins the abbreviation TransMIT to capture his approach. Mukherjee’s book examines how Indian SF syncs with or questions the technological and scientific paradigms of India under Nehru and the Non-Aligned Movement; arguing that Indian SF needs to be seen as semiperipheral, the book also applies concepts from energy humanities [End Page 586] to Indian SF in an arresting way. Suparno Banerjee’s monograph is a solidly grounded work in its clearly explained choice of corpus, and a methodology that elicits particularly generative insights in a number of areas, including the epistemological status of science in Indian SF, the importance of SF written in bhasha or non-English Indian languages, the interplay between past and future in Indian SF, analysis of how Indian SF imaginatively represents the Other, and attention to Indian women writers of SF.Banerjee offers a lucid and useful chronology of Indian SF in four historical periods: 1835–1905, 1905–47, 1947–95, and 1995–2019. The period from 1835 to 1905 offers the first specimens of Indian SF, primarily in the form of future histories that question colonialism, in the utopian mode, and adventure tales and stories with scientific and technological elements. The establishment of a British education system, starting in the 1820s, gave an impetus to the birth of Indian SF. Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s “Sultana’s Dream” was published in 1905, a year that heralds the second period lasting until Indian independence. In this period, SF starts appearing not just in the English, Bengali, and Hindi languages, as in the first period, but also in a number of other Indian languages, such as Assamese, Marathi, and Tamil. Children’s and youth magazines develop from the 1920s, spaces where science writing and SF both appear. Nationalist, anticolonial stances emerge, challenging western hegemony, in the 1940s. In the early post-Independence period, the nationalistic elements become even stronger, and SF interacts quite strongly with older forms of fantastic writing such as myths, fairytales, and ghost stories. This third period, Banerjee argues, is the golden age of bhasha SF. From the 1990s English-language SF again becomes very prominent in India and its diaspora, though SF in bhashas continues to flourish.Banerjee examines fiction not just from post-Independence India, but also from colonial British India, and diasporic Indian writing. SF written primarily in Bengali, English, Hindi, and Marathi is examined and, when possible, the book also brings into its ambit of analysis SF written in the languages Assamese, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada. Reflexivity about the corpus of... (shrink)

The premise of contract law is that the redistribution of entitlements that results from contract is justified by the process of agreement. But theories of contract differ importantly on how and when voluntary exchange justifies a resorting of entitlements. Pure theories regard the principles of contract as essentially derivative from some aspect of the principle of autonomy; contracting parties’ intent to assume legal obligation is in principle necessary and sufficient for its enforcement. Perfect theories do not view contract as self-justifying (...) but regard the process of agreement as reliable evidence that contracts are welfare-improving. This article demonstrates the limitations of pure and perfect views. It favours instead imperfect theories of contract, which would have judges self-consciously pursue the normative ends of contract law as they apply context-sensitive rules. (shrink)

Perceptual and recursion-based faculties have long been recognized to be vital constituents of human (and, in general, animal) cognition. However, certain faculties such as the visual and the linguistic faculty have come to receive far more academic and experimental attention, in recent decades, than other recognized categories of faculties. This paper seeks to highlight the imbalance in these studies and bring into sharper focus the need for further in-depth philosophical treatments of faculties such as especially hearing, touch, and proprioception, besides (...) other faculties such as the olfactory and gustatory ones. It also seeks to bring to bear the debate on the role of qualia in perception and overall in cognition in its thesis of the significance of these other modular faculties for genuine insights into cognition as a (now) technologically expanded domain. (shrink)

Presents a collection of essays on fiscal policies, economic policies, and tax reforms in the context of financial reforms as a separate discipline of economics. Edited by Ameresh Bagchi, these essays are authored by reputed academicians in this field, such as James Buchanan, Joseph Stiglitz, Raja Chelliah, and Richard Musgrave.