This book offers a novel account of the relationship of experience to knowledge. The account builds on the intuitive idea that our ordinary perceptual judgments are not autonomous, that an interdependence obtains between our view of the world and our perceptual judgments. Anil Gupta shows in this important study that this interdependence is the key to a satisfactory account of experience. He uses tools from logic and the philosophy of language to argue that his account of experience makes available (...) an attractive and feasible empiricism. (shrink)

Debates about God’s personhood, or lack thereof, are central to philosophy of religion. This paper aims to advance these debates by presenting the “greatness of personhood argument” for God’s personhood and a dilemma for those who deny God’s personhood. I also consider various objections to this argument and this dilemma and argue that they fail. Notably, my reasoning in defence of personal theism is cross-cultural insofar as personal theists across various religious traditions can use it. Thus, this paper defends personal (...) theism in a manner that can bring Western and non-Western theists into closer dialogue regarding the topic of God’s personhood. (shrink)

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)

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)

Perceptual load plays a critical role in identification and awareness of stimuli. Given the differences in emotion–attention interactions, we investigated the perception of distractor emotional faces in two different load conditions under divided attention with a task based on the inattentional blindness paradigm. Participants performed a low- or high-load task with a string of letters presented against a happy, sad or neutral face (in a circular form) as the background. Participants were asked to identify the face that appeared in the (...) critical trial. Results indicate an interaction between emotion and load. First, identification of faces with happy expression was better than chance and unaffected by load. Second, performance was worse than chance for faces with sad expression in the high-load condition, indicating inhibition of unattended sad distractor faces in the critical trial. This indicates that inhibitory processes during a difficult attentional task under divided attention influence subsequent perception of distractor stimuli especially sad faces. The results have implications for the theories of selective attention as well as the role of emotions in conscious perception. (shrink)

Business ethics is understood in a comprehensive and differentiated sense, as in recent years it has evolved under the influence of globalization. The present book examines inclusive growth, which includes more than just poverty alleviation and seeks to address the problem of equity through the enhancement of opportunities for all parties. This conforms to the fundamental task of business ethics, which is to enhance the ethical quality of decision-making and actions taken at all levels of business, id est, at the (...) personal (micro-), organizational (meso-), and systemic (macro-) levels and thus extending the narrow notion of business ethics as a niche for managers with good intentions. In the real world of competition and coordination, various situations produce various tradeoffs that the three pillars of the economy - Business, Government and Society - have to pursue for their survival and sustenance. In this book, we look into many such case studies in which the strength of one component leads to a benefit for one of the other components and a detriment for the other, thus causing an imbalance between the three pillars. This book will be equally valuable to students, philosophers, decision-makers in business and policy-makers at large. (shrink)

The 'wall' that differentiates two different kinds of attitudes of the same person at different points of time denotes, as the author envisages, Conscious Attitudinal Infringement Area, where moral dilemmas take birth to bridge the two different kinds of attitudes to give way to attitudinal interrelatedness. In order to 'reinforce' CAIA to narrow the gap between personal behaviour and public behaviour, lead a moral life and behave ethically in public, there has to be harmony between the inner life of thoughts, (...) feelings and emotions, and the circumstances and events in the person's outer environment. After discussing the corporate scenario in India in brief, the author has put forward a model called Action By Objectives as the basis of the harmonization approach. Drawing inspiration from the ethical aspects of Buddhism, Sufism, Sikhism and Vedanta in this context, he suggests an abhyasa yoga menu for refining samskaras and reaching the ultimate level of positive, inspiring leadership. (shrink)

This essay historicizes cultural and psychic economies in the postwar United States under the sign of material scarcity. It situates the proliferation of plastic flowers in domestic space within a context of bureaucratic anxieties surrounding natural resource scarcity, and trends toward ‘outdoor living’ that were an offshoot of the ideology of economic growth. Interrogating repeated, if relatively unexamined, invocations of ‘anxious’ suburban subjects in descriptions of postwar society, the essay suggests that plastic flowers shored up a sense of stability and (...) permanence at a time when nuclear annihilation, Cold War paranoia, and population growth combined to render life uncertain and potentially unsustainable. The essay concludes by reflecting on how legacies of that epoch – and the fiction of permanence offered by plastic flowers – endure in contemporary fantasies of limitless progress. (shrink)

Glocal environmental governance lags behind the science regarding the seriousness of the combined environmental and developmental challenges. Governance regimes have developed differently in different issue areas and are often inconsistent and contradictory; furthermore governance innovations in each area lead to new challenges. The combined effect of issue-based, plural, and fragmented governance raises key normative questions in environmental governance. Hence, this overview paper aims to address the following questions: How can the global community move towards a more normatively consistent global architecture (...) for sustainable development? In order to address this question, I first examine the key normative issues and the nature of governance in the area of climate change, water and forests. In doing so I also look at the implications of each for food production, safety and security. The paper concludes that there are strong normative and architectural inconsistencies between the fragmented and plural issue-specific regimes; that such inconsistencies are inevitable in an ‘anarchic’ international order; that some degree of normative coherence can be strived at through the adoption of global constitutionalism and rule of law; and that the present discussion on global sustainable development goals is a first step towards creating a normatively consistent global architecture for sustainable development. (shrink)

_An Introduction to Indian Philosophy_ offers a profound yet accessible survey of the development of India’s philosophical tradition. Beginning with the formation of Brahmanical, Jaina, Materialist, and Buddhist traditions, Bina Gupta guides the reader through the classical schools of Indian thought, culminating in a look at how these traditions inform Indian philosophy and society in modern times. Offering translations from source texts and clear explanations of philosophical terms, this text provides a rigorous overview of Indian philosophical contributions to epistemology, (...) metaphysics, philosophy of language, and ethics. This is a must-read for anyone seeking a reliable and illuminating introduction to Indian philosophy. (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)

Anil Gupta; XV*—Remarks on Definitions and the Concept of Truth1, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 89, Issue 1, 1 June 1989, Pages 227–246, https.

In order to appreciate the content and structure of this article, one must first distinguish between Indian philosophy, even in its modern form, and philosophy which is done by Indians. When a philosopher of Indian heritage writes on modern Western logic or on phenomenology, he/she is not doing Indian philosophy. Such philosophers have not been included in this essay. According to my understanding of the term, their work would be Indian philosophy only if these Western ideas have some impact on (...) their study of Indian philosophy, or if they use Indian philosophical ideas to interpret Western philosophy, or if their work is aimed at preserving and/or extending traditional Indian philosophical pursuits. Similarly, Indian philosophy is not restricted to philosophy written by Indians; it includes philosophy written by anyone, regardless of national origin, who develops, interprets, or reinterprets the themes of classical Indian philosophy. There are many excellent Western scholars of Indian philosophy, such as Eric Frauwallner, Eliot Deutsch, Daniel Ingalls, and Karl Potter. However, because of the limitations of space, I have not discussed their work in this article. I have selected only contemporary philosophers of Indian heritage whose work coherently fits into a narrative account of recent developments in Indian philosophy that reflects the continuation and enrichment of the Indian tradition. (shrink)

The editorial introduces issue 21.1 of Technoetic Arts via a critical reflection on the artificial intelligence hype (AI hype) that emerged in 2022. Tracing the history of the critique of Large Language Models, the editorial underscores that there are substantial ethical challenges related to bias in the training data, copyright issues, as well as ecological challenges which the technology industry has consistently downplayed over the years. -/- The editorial highlights the distinction between the current AI technology’s reliance on extensive pre-existing (...) human-generated data for pattern recognition and the performative process inherent in art practice. Patterns of creative output can be replicated without a thorough understanding of underlying concepts. In contrast, the performative process of art practice, as explored through the conceptual frameworks of creativity by Noam Chomsky, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Roger T. Ames and with reference to an earlier publication of the editorial’s author, creates concepts and continually ‘strives to extend itself towards the unknown.’ -/- Following this introductory section, the editorial provides an overview of the ten articles featured in this issue of Technoetic Arts. The first four texts engage with emerging technologies from various perspectives in art and design. The subsequent six articles, part of a special section titled 'Perspectives from Chandigarh,' reflect a quest for meaningful existence within colonial, patriarchal, and biopolitical structures that frame everyday practices of exclusion and oppression. (shrink)

In most areas of medicine, the physician's primary task is to diagnose the patient's presenting problem by correctly identifying the underlying pathology causing that problem. Diagnoses are established through a process of correlating the information obtained from an interview with the patient about his history of illness and circumstances, with additional evidence of the underlying disease derived from physical examination findings and/or the results of laboratory investigations and diagnostic imaging. In contemporary health care, various movements that call for a shift (...) in clinical care away from underlying disease pathology toward understanding people and their experience of disease are receiving growing... (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)

In this rigorous investigation into the logic of truth Anil Gupta and Nuel Belnap explain how the concept of truth works in both ordinary and pathological..

A growing number of infertile couples and other individuals desiring children are seeking to fulfill their desire for parenthood transnationally through the use of donor gametes and a surrogate. The number of “fertility tourists” from developed countries to low-income countries is growing phenomenally. Indian women, too, are participating as producers in these “biocrossings,” turning India into the surrogacy outsourcing capital of the world in the globalized bioeconomy of assisted reproduction. I argue for a ban on commercial egg donation and surrogacy (...) and a social-justice approach that would hold the state responsible for providing basic social goods to low-income households. I also argue for a gender-justice approach so that women would not be compelled to adopt surrogacy as a strategy for survival and upward social mobility. (shrink)

Consumers of software often face an acquisition-mode decision, namely whether to purchase or pirate that software. In terms of consumer welfare, consumers who pirate software may stand in opposition to those who purchase it. Marketers also face a decision whether to attempt to thwart that piracy or to ignore, if not encourage it as an aid to their software's diffusion, and policymakers face the decision whether to adopt interventionist policies, which are government-centric, or laissez faire policies, which are marketer-centric. Here (...) in order to assess the decision-making of all three of these stakeholders, we focus on the consumer's point-of-view as central and examine it by considering on a comparative basis the ethical dimension versus other dimensions, including economic, legal, and other salient consumer behavior considerations. Based on a survey of 689 software consumers conducted over the Internet, the results indicate that ethics as a factor is embedded in a multidimensional set of determinant factors influencing software piracy, including attitudes, legal aspects, social support, perceptions of economic loss and age. Policy and research implications, based on these findings, are provided. (shrink)

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic there was widespread concern that healthcare systems would be overwhelmed, and specifically, that there would be insufficient critical care capacity in terms of beds, ventilators or staff to care for patients. In the UK, this was avoided by a threefold approach involving widespread, rapid expansion of critical care capacity, reduction of healthcare demand from non-COVID-19 sources by temporarily pausing much of normal healthcare delivery, and by governmental and societal responses that reduced demand through national lockdown. (...) Despite high-level documents designed to help manage limited critical care capacity, none provided sufficient operational direction to enable use at the bedside in situations requiring triage. We present and describe the development of a structured process for fair allocation of critical care resources in the setting of insufficient capacity. The document combines a wide variety of factors known to impact on outcome from critical illness, integrated with broad-based clinical judgement to enable structured, explicit, transparent decision-making founded on robust ethical principles. It aims to improve communication and allocate resources fairly, while avoiding triage decisions based on a single disease, comorbidity, patient age or degree of frailty. It is designed to support and document decision-making. The document has not been needed to date, nor adopted as hospital policy. However, as the pandemic evolves, the resumption of necessary non-COVID-19 healthcare and economic activity mean capacity issues and the potential need for triage may yet return. The document is presented as a starting point for stakeholder feedback and discussion. (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)

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”.

This article discusses the emergence of the concept of ‘transnational feminisms’ as a differentiated notion from ‘global sisterhood’ within feminist postcolonial criticism. This is done in order to examine its usefulness for interrogating the globalization of reproductive technologies and women’s right to selfdetermination over their own bodies by using these technologies. In particular, women’s use of technologies for assisted conception, and the local and global transactions in reproductive body parts form a testing ground for transnational feminisms. Does the construction of (...) individual reproductive rights still leave some ground for women’s collective struggles? It is proposed that, if at all, transnational solidarity on this issue is possible, it will have to be built on the concept of universal ethical norms regarding human dignity. (shrink)

Since the late 1900s the business world has been under increasing pressure to demonstrate responsible social behaviour and the pressure continues to grow. Today, the role of business in society is on the Boardroom agenda and at stake are corporate reputation, innovation, competitiveness and growth. It is a clarion call, that either, the CEO and the Board manage it or someone else will manage it for them. As we know that we cannot solve our problems with the same level of (...) thinking that created them; therefore it is imperative that we look beyond the 20th century’s scientism and materialism dominated worldly ways for solutions. In view of the above, I believe that the ‘Indian Philosophy of Consciousness’ which focuses on practicing “better-worldliness” rather than “worldliness” and has developed over the past 4000 years has the potential to help business. Better worldliness is ‘a disposition towards life that is based on a Dharmic (righteous) way of conduct; a conduct with compassion and forbearance for fellow man, no matter what the nationality, or the colour of the skin, religion or caste.’ Society expects similar compassion and forbearance from business. (shrink)