Festschrift honoring Mandana Misra, b. 1929, Sanskrit philosopher; comprises articles chiefly on Mimamsa school in Hindu philosophy.

Ancient Indian philosophies consider self-realization as a fundamental concept and aim of human life, which appears theoretically similar to the self-actualization concept of the West. This article compares and contrasts the self-actualization concept with the views of ancient Indian wisdom to create a model. Both ideas strive for a more elevated Self, unleashing our potential or the realization/actualization of the true Self. From the Indian Vedanta philosophy emerged the Panchakosha theory of personality, which provides a structural framework for human states (...) of consciousness leading to higher development and transcendental identity. According to the scriptures, any form of stress is due to an underdeveloped state of consciousness at these levels or due to disconnection from the true Self; once an individual comes in contact with the ‘true Self’, the problems of life are eliminated. Yoga is a systematic process and way of human development, and applying the principles of Yoga philosophy in life will help in transcending one from the lower Self to the higher Self, awakening human potential, and becoming self-actualized. Yogis, who practice Yoga, could be responsible for a positive shift towards sustainable communities or transformative environments through enhanced mindfulness, self-actualization, and social capital demonstrated by enhanced moral values, trust, engagement, and acceptance. This theoretical model from classical Indian thought has the potential to provide the needed guidelines to create more self-actualized people. The dimension of well-being and prescriptions on how to reach this state of highest well-being is the essence of Indian philosophy. (shrink)

In the fight against racism, philosophy has to interrogate caste in its own histories and current decolonial consensus. Caste has been evading its interrogation as the oldest race theory and racist practice, which continue to oppress the lower-caste peoples who constitute the majority population of the Indian subcontinent. Caste and race are species of the hypophysics of man, which consecrates scaled intrinsic value in human nature through the notion of “being born as” by “being born to.” They are analogues in (...) having the same denigrate-dominate function of exploiting by including as born inferior. However, caste and race are also homologues since the hypophysics of caste has been at the origins of the hypophysics of race from at least the eighteenth century, culminating in the “Aryan doctrine” of the Nazis, now being revived. Caste was the empirical, conceptual, and textual resource for Europeans as it showed that large groups could be dominated as well as excluded through the self-designated superiority, supplied by the Brahminical texts, of the oppressing group. Rather than a colonial construct, caste is the oldest racism, which in colonial times devised new calypsologies—ways to mask itself against rising anticaste thought and politics. Postcolonial and subaltern theories disguise caste’s racism as “religion,” “culture,” and subaltern subjectivity, while some sociologists have denigrated Dalit scholarship as unacademic and emotional. The homologies of caste are still dangerously regnant today. (shrink)

Gandhi’s notion of passive-resistance is critical in two ways and defines swaraj and swadeshi, leading to his assertion that India alone is the land of redemption for the world afflicted with modern civilization, “the sheet-anchor of our hope”. “Sound at the foundation”, “India remains as it was before”, while the world speeds on, “usurp[ing] the function of Godhead” and indulg[ing] in novel experiments”. This paper aims at elaborating Gandhi’s definition of nature in terms of the scalar, speed, as found in (...) Hind Swaraj and other writings in order to demonstrate that India as hind swaraj is critical nation. (shrink)

Adoption of technology, a research topic within the Information Systems area, is usually studied at two levels: organizational level and user level. This paper examines the range of methods used for studying technology adoption issues at both these levels. The approaches were selected after conducting a review of 48 articles on technology adoption and usage, published in peer reviewed journals between 1985 and 2003. The journals reviewed include the MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, European Journal of Information Systems, Information Systems (...) Journal, and other relevant journals in the IS area. The findings suggest that the survey method was used predominantly when investigating the topics of user adoption and the usage of technology. In contrast, the case study method is the most widely used when examining adoption issues at the organizational level. (shrink)

COVID19 pandemic is pushing business organizations to cope in newer, more resilient ways. In this study, in-depth qualitative research was conducted using Weick's sensemaking framework (1995) to give organizational leaders a snapshot of how individuals grappled with sensemaking during this time. The enactment of sensemaking for individuals occurred based on four major COVIDian realities: life during the lockdown, work from home, moments of reflection, and struggles and emotions. The implications of the findings are two folds. First, the dynamic nature of (...) extracted cues coupled with greater technology use increased enactment frequency amongst individuals leading to a collapse in sensemaking. Secondly, we propose that this collapse has a significant impact on human cognition, which will further affect the nature of work as well as the meaning of work in life. (shrink)

This paper aims to critically analyze one of the most impactful events reported from the Indian corporate scenario in recent years, from the premise of its aesthetic underpinnings. Our focus is on the ambitious 2008 all cash cross-border acquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover businesses by Tata Motors Limited from Ford Motor Company, US. This move not only added stature to the already reputed brand but was also instrumental in positioning India in the global automotive arena. Using the Natyasastra, an (...) ancient Sanskrit scripture on Indian dramaturgy, as an aesthetic tool, we attempt to unravel the emotional performance depicted by various stakeholders partaking in the theatrics of the Jaguar Land Rover acquisition event. In the backdrop of theatrical performance, we examine the dialogical exchange between three distinct sets of actors, the firm, media, and equity market, to identify and elucidate the emotions they predominantly depict in the Jaguar Land Rover acquisition. This paper’s over-arching goal is to shift the preoccupation with metrics of organizational performance to focus instead on the emotional performance manifested through organizational activities, using an aesthetic and essentially Indian performative perspective. (shrink)

Is there a philosophical nationalism? Reading Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation and its use by the Nazis, Derrida concluded that all nationalisms are philosophical and onto-theological as they are posited beyond race, biology, and nature. However, Fichte’s text reveals a specific form of racism that insists on biology and nature. Fichte’s racism is a species of “hypophysics,” a consecration of nature as value. His theory of language is simultaneously biological and spiritual, these two aspects flowing from a single geistige (...) Naturgesetz (spiritual-natural-law) and determining the hypophysical unity of language, community and “philosophy” (as he defined it). The logic of such a hypophysics is misrecognized and left unaddressed in the conventional categories of “naturalism” and “biologism.” Further, hypophysical-logic is not onto-theo-logic (in Heidegger’s definition). This imposes new questions for the history and future of philosophy: how does hypophysics enter philosophy; can there be philosophy without hypophysics and its attendant racisms? (shrink)

First published in 1986, Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft remains the only analysis of indigenous discourse about an African belief system undertaken from within the framework of Anglo-American analytical philosophy. Taking as its point of departure W. V. O. Quine's thesis about the indeterminacy of translation, the book investigates questions of Yoruba epistemology and of how knowledge is conceived in an oral culture.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Vedic heritage The Prithivi Sukta The Epics and Puranic heritage The sanctity‐of‐life principle Pollution and its prevention in Hindu scriptures Eco‐spirituality and environmental conservation.

Freud’s late works established the schema of a more or less inexorable civilizational course built around one drive—the death drive—despite his emphatic insistence on a dual structure of two drives. This schema became influential for Critical Theory and in a more subterranean way, also for decolonial thought, and has been widely invoked during the pandemic. It indicates the extent to which drive, destruction, and mastery have consolidated into a, which not only fails to be dislodged by but even informs Derrida’s (...) readings of Freud. Instead, we have to be attentive to the play of homology in Freud as of life, psyche, and civilization, as archaic inheritance. Freudian homology distinguishes itself from what Derrida called “genealogical drive.” The Freudian assumptions in this regard need to be addressed in a step beyond which works with a concept of origin—as its own interruption—that can neither comprehend nor deconstruct the concept of origin as a single and perpetually active homological power as is to be found in Freud. (shrink)

We examined whether the N400 Event-Related Potential component would be modulated by dispositional affect during sentence processing. In this study, 33 participants read sentences manipulated by direct object type and object determiner type. We were particularly interested in sentences of the form: The connoisseur tasted thewineon the tour vs. The connoisseur tasted the #roof… We expected that processing incongruent direct objects vs. congruent objects would elicit N400 effects. Previous ERP language experiments have shown that participants in positive and negative moods (...) were differentially sensitive to semantic anomaly, resulting in different N400 effects. Presently, we ask whether individual dispositional affect scores would modulate N400 effects as shown previously. Namely, previous results showed larger N400 effects associated with happy moods and attenuated amplitudes associated with sad moods. Results revealed significant N400 effects, driven by the #roof vs. the wine, where larger amplitude differences were found for individuals showing smaller negative affect scores, thus partially replicating previous findings. We discuss our results in terms of theories of local inhibition, such that low NA promotes stronger lexico-semantic links in sentences. Finally, our results support accounts of language processing that include social and biological characteristics of individuals during real-time sentence comprehension. (shrink)

The authors of this insightful and urgent collection both use the metaphor of evil as a virus or contagion and conceptualize the COVID-19 virus as a manifestation of evil to reconsider the purpose of philosophy in and for a pandemic.

The New Evil Demon problem has been hotly debated since the case was introduced in the early 1980’s (e.g. Lehrer and Cohen 1983; Cohen 1984), and there seems to be recent increased interest in the topic. In a forthcoming collection of papers on the New Evil Demon problem (Dutant and Dorsch, forthcoming), at least two of the papers, both by prominent epistemologists, attempt to resist the problem by appealing to the distinction between justification and excuses. My primary aim here is (...) to critically evaluate this new excuse maneuver as a response to the New Evil Demon problem. -/- Their response attempts to give us reason to reject the idea that victims of the New Evil Demon have justification for believing as they do. I shall argue that this approach is ultimately unsuccessful, however much of value can be learned from these attempts. In particular, progress in the debate can be made by following those who advance the excuse maneuver and make explicit the connection between epistemic justification and epistemic norms. By doing so, the questions being debated are clarified, as is the methodology being used to attempt to answer them. (shrink)

There are various equivalent formulations of the Church-Turing thesis. A common one is that every effective computation can be carried out by a Turing machine. The Church-Turing thesis is often misunderstood, particularly in recent writing in the philosophy of mind.

This article takes the linguistic space of North India during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and tries to see how a nationalistic linguistic ideology that was shaping up at that time, creating Hindi and Urdu linguistic communities, used gender as a tool to portray and assert a masculinist vision of language and nation. It involved not just censoring certain representations of women and their cultural spaces, but also using the issue of ‘vulgar’ representations as a premise to marginalize certain languages (...) and their literature. The article looks at the colonial ideology that worked as an enforcer for the nationalists to work towards achieving what they felt as a sanitized and moral form of literature and culture. The linguistic ideology that accompanied these revisions was of projecting Hindi (Khari Boli) as a national language while limiting spaces of other languages, such as Braj, Urdu and Bhojpuri, in the region, by criticizing either their use of sexual imagery or by stereotyping them in a gendered way. This article investigates the arguments of nationalist writers and highlights their masculinist and patriarchal ideas in their bid for the new national language. (shrink)

It is common to account for our senses on the basis of our sensory organs. One way of glossing why Aristotle famously counted five senses—and why his count became common sense in the West and elsewhere—is because there are five rather obvious organs of sense. In more modern accounts, this organ criterion of the senses has transformed into a neurobiological criterion; that is to say, part of what it means to be a sense is to have an associated organ with (...) appropriate physiological properties. For example, part of the claim that humans have a sense of vision is that we have a non-vestigial organ (the eye) that has cells (photoreceptors) especially sensitive to the properties of electromagnetic radiation. However, the nature of this “organ criterion” is a point of some contention. Is it a sufficient criterion? Necessary? To be called “vision” need the organ mediating it give rise to “visual experiences”? This chapter will consider the neurobiological criterion as it was originally presented in Aristotle and later reconceptualized in 19th-century neurophysiologist Johannes Müller’s “Law of Specific Nerve Energies.” By understanding the role of neurobiology in these accounts, we will be able to explore the deficiencies of contemporary accounts that downplay neurobiology in differentiating the senses. We will consider one of these accounts in detail: Alva Noë’s recent arguments in favor of an enactive approach to perceptual psychology. (shrink)

Sentences such as "The author started the book" are indeterminate because they do not make explicit what the subject (the author) started doing with the object (the book). In principle, indeterminate sentences allow for an infinite number of interpretations. One theory, however, assumes that these sentences are resolved by semantic coercion, a linguistic process that forces the noun "book" to be interpreted as an activity (e.g., writing the book) or by a process that interpolates this activity information in the resulting (...) enriched semantic composition. An alternative theory, pragmatic, assumes classical semantic composition, whereby meaning arises from the denotation of words and how they are combined syntactically, with enrichment obtained via pragmatic inferences beyond linguistic-semantic processes. Cognitive neuroscience studies investigating the neuroanatomical and functional correlates of indeterminate sentences have shown activations either at the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex or at the left inferior frontal gyrus. These studies have supported the semantic coercion theory assuming that one of these regions is where enriched semantic composition takes place. Employing fMRI, we found that indeterminate sentences activate bilaterally the superior temporal gyrus, the right inferior frontal gyrus, and the anterior cingulate cortex, more so than control sentences ("The author wrote the book"). Activation of indeterminate sentences exceeded that of anomalous sentences ("…drank the book") and engaged more left- and right-hemisphere areas than other sentence types. We suggest that the widespread activations for indeterminate sentences represent the deployment of pragmatic-inferential processes, which seek to enrich sentence content without necessarily resorting to semantic coercion. (shrink)

1.1 Manifolds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.2 Tangent Vectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (...) . . . . . . . . . . . 7 1.3 Vector Fields, Integral Curves, and Flows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 1.4 Tensors and Tensor Fields on Manifolds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 1.5 The Action of Smooth Maps on Tensor Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 1.6 Lie Derivatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 1.7 Derivative Operators and Geodesics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 1.8 Curvature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 1.9 Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 1.10 Hypersurfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 1.11 Volume Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96.. (shrink)

В книге собраны статьи по актуальным вопросам политической теории, которые находятся в центре дискуссий отечественных и зарубежных философов и обществоведов. Книга имеет полемический характер и предназначена всем.

For German townsmen, life during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was characterized by a culture of arms, with urban citizenry representing the armed power of the state. This book investigates how men were socialized to the martial ethic from all sides, and how masculine identity was confirmed with blades and guns.