Explanatory notes on the philosophical position (sidhānta) of Vaibhāṣika, Sautrāntika, Yogācārya, and Mādhyamika schools of Buddhist with Hinduism according to Sa-skya-pa scholar.

Research essays on Hindu and Jaina logic.

Most analyses of whistleblowing are concerned with the whistleblower as an actor or with the act of whistleblowing itself. However, as soon as the whistleblower enters the public arena, a social dynamic emerges of interdependent actors with different responsibilities and different interests.Such a dynamic demands a more comprehensive approach in which the motives of the different actors in the public debate are taken into account.This approach is developed here using an exemplary case of whistleblowing that took place in a Dutch (...) research institute.The intensive media attention damaged both the institute and the whistleblower.In retrospect this could have been avoided.In our analysis we give extra attention to the motives involved and to the inevitability of media logic.In order to avoid unnecessary damage we recommend guidelines to the three basic actors:the whistleblower, the organization and the media. (shrink)

The free energy principle (FEP) portends to provide a unifying principle for the biological and cognitive sciences. It states that for a system to maintain non-equilibrium steady-state with its environment it must minimise its (information-theoretic) free energy. Under the FEP, to minimise free energy is equivalent to engaging in approximate Bayesian inference. According to the FEP, therefore, inference is at the explanatory base of biology and cognition. In this paper, we discuss a specific challenge to this inferential formulation of adaptive (...) self-organisation. We call it the universal ethology challenge: it states that the FEP cannot unify biology and cognition, for life itself (or adaptive self-organisation) does not require inferential routines to select adaptive solutions to environmental pressures (as mandated by the FEP). We show that it is possible to overcome the universal ethology challenge by providing a cautious and exploratory treatment of inference under the FEP. We conclude that there are good reasons for thinking that the FEP can unify biology and cognition under the notion of approximate Bayesian inference, even if further challenges must be addressed to properly draw such a conclusion. (shrink)

The free energy principle is sometimes put forward as accounting for biological self-organization and cognition. It states that for a system to maintain non-equilibrium steady-state with its environment it can be described as minimising its free energy. It is said to be entirely scale-free, applying to anything from particles to organisms, and interactive machines, spanning from the abiotic to the biotic. Because the FEP is so general in its application, one might wonder whether this framework can capture anything specific to (...) biology. We take steps to correct for this here. We first explicate the worry, taking pebbles as examples of an abiotic system, and then discuss to what extent the FEP can distinguish its dynamics from an organism’s. We articulate the notion of ‘autonomy as precarious operational closure’ from the enactive literature, and investigate how it can be unpacked within the FEP. This enables the FEP to delineate between the abiotic and the biotic; avoiding the pebble worry that keeps it out of touch with the living systems we encounter in the world. (shrink)

What does it take to be a consultant in business ethics? Is the role of the ethical consultant like that of an engineer, a playwright or an interpreter? And where are the women consultants? The author is a scientific researcher in Ethics at Nijenrode, The Netherlands School of Business.

Predictive processing is an increasingly popular approach to cognition, perception and action. It says that the brain is essentially a hierarchical prediction machine. It is typically construed in a representationalist and inferentialist fashion so that the brain makes contentful inferences on the basis of representational models. In this paper, I argue that the predictive processing framework is inconsistent with this epistemic position. In particular, I argue that the combination of hierarchical modeling, contentful inferentialism and representationalism entail an internal inconsistency. Specifically, (...) for a particular set of states, there will be both a representation requirement and not. Yet a system cannot both be required to represent a certain set of states and not be required to represent those states. Due to this contradiction, I propose to reject the standard view. I suggest that predictive processing is best interpreted in terms of reliable covariation instead, entailing an instrumentalist approach to the statistical machinery. (shrink)

Autism research is increasingly moving to a view centred around sensorimotor atypicalities instead of traditional, ethically problematical, views predicated on social-cognitive deficits. We explore how an enactivist approach to autism illuminates how social differences, stereotypically associated with autism, arise from such sensorimotor atypicalities. Indeed, in a state space description, this can be taken as a skewing of sensorimotor variables that influences social interaction and so also enculturation and habituation. We argue that this construal leads to autism being treated on a (...) par with other sensorimotor atypicalities such as blindness or atypical height. This leads to our conclusion that, insofar there is an ethical call to inclusion in our public sphere regardless of contingent bodily difference, an enactivist take on autism naturally leads to extending such inclusion to autism. Moreover, our analysis suggests a concrete way forward to achieve inclusion of autistics: by being more attentive to autistic sensorimotor specifics. (shrink)

On the life and philosophy of Gautama Buddha.

Dass der heutigen Literaturwissenschaft der anthropologische wie transzendentale Akzent im Begriff der Poesie abhanden zu kommen scheint, soll weder verwundern noch alarmieren. Friedrich Schlegel bezeichnete seine Zeit als eine "entgeistete", der er vorwiegend auf den Wegen der Poesie und Philosophie und ihrer Verbindung durch das menschliche Vermögen der Einbildungskraft zu begegnen versuchte. Warum gilt die Philosophie noch immer als eine "hilfsbedürftige" Wissenschaft, die zu ihrer "Vervollkommnung" einer Ergänzung bedarf? Das Buch rekonstruiert in systematischer Weise, indem es sich sowohl in die (...) Nähe als auch in Distanz zum theoretischen Friedrich Schlegel begibt, die Geschichte einer solchen Verbindung. Es ist jene vielversprechende Geschichte, in der sich Fantasie und Vernunft im Bewusstsein des Menschen wieder gleichermaßen einzufinden haben. (shrink)

A diversidade do pensamento filosófico sobre as transformações modernas e contemporâneas que cercam a produção artística desdobra-se nos quinze textos que compõem o livro, os quais abordam os mais variados gêneros: cinema, poesia, escultura, pintura e fotografia. Além disso, os textos dialogam ora com autores consagrados - de Winckelmann e Schelling a Benjamin e Rancière -, ora com os próprios artistas - de Glauber Rocha a Joseph Kosuth - e ora com contextos socioculturais mais amplos - desde o capitalismo estético (...) até a estética dos gêneros. Os principais problemas filosóficos que balizam a história da estética e se mantém no cerne dos debates modernos e contemporâneos atravessam esta coletânea: temas tradicionais como a educação do gosto, o conceito de beleza, o princípio da imitação da natureza e a relação entre aparência e verdade são atualizados com acuidade. Temas fundamentais do século XX como a autonomia da arte, o papel da arte na invenção de um povo, a liberdade e a experiência estética, a perda da materialidade das obras de arte e a função da crítica de arte também recebem atenção cuidadosa. Temas que dialogam diretamente com a situação atual das artes são igualmente contemplados, como a subsunção da arte pelo consumo, o possível caráter transgressor e revolucionário do gesto artístico e o papel das imagens na contemporaneidade. (shrink)

'Os limites do sentido' pensa a semântica como um gesto de incluir no objeto da lingüística o sujeito, o mundo, a história, numa re-discussão permanente do corte saussereano.

As a topic, organization design is poorly understood. While it is featured in most management books as a chapter dedicated to organizational structures, it is unclear whether organization design is a one-off event or an ongoing process. Thus, it has traditionally been understood to be the same as an organizational configuration, with neat lines of communication and distribution of responsibilities following pre-set typologies. Yet what can be said to constitute organizational structure in this first half of the 21st century? The (...) extraordinary growth of digital communications, the decreasing relevance of hierarchical bureaucracies, and the general demise of command-and-control have all but decimated the traditional notion of organizational structure. Organization design needs a theoretical revamping. Using a mix of design and social science theories and concepts, Rodrigo Magalhães outlines a new human-centric interpretation of design, design principles, and design culture. He puts forward a paradigm where the organization, for purposes of its design, is considered to be a social actor in a permanent state of transformation, with significant repercussions for social and economic life. He also proposes a model of 'leaderful organization design', distinguished as practice-based, guided by values of democratic participation, and driven by design logics which places meaning-making and meaning-taking at the center of organizational life and can be adopted and adapted to suit different environments. (shrink)

This aim of this paper is two-fold: it critically analyses and rejects accounts blending active inference as theory of mind and enactivism; and it advances an enactivist-dynamic understanding of social cognition that is compatible with active inference. While some social cognition theories seemingly take an enactive perspective on social cognition, they explain it as the attribution of mental states to other people, by assuming representational structures, in line with the classic Theory of Mind. Holding both enactivism and ToM, we argue, (...) entails contradiction and confusion due to two ToM assumptions widely known to be rejected by enactivism: that social cognition reduces to mental representation and social cognition is a hardwired contentful ‘toolkit’ or ‘starter pack’ that fuels the model-like theorising supposed in. The paper offers a positive alternative, one that avoids contradictions or confusion. After rejecting ToM-inspired theories of social cognition and clarifying the profile of social cognition under enactivism, that is without assumptions and, the last section advances an enactivist-dynamic model of cognition as dynamic, real-time, fluid, contextual social action, where we use the formalisms of dynamical systems theory to explain the origins of socio-cognitive novelty in developmental change and active inference as a tool to demonstrate social understanding as generalised synchronisation. (shrink)

Study on the fundamentals of Mimamsa philosophy.

Exhaustive work on fundamentals of Mimamsa philosophy.

Introduction on various aspects of Buddhist philosophical concepts.

Considers the potential of autopoiesis theory to provide an alternate unifying framework for the study of organizations as systems and of organizational phenomena as emergent phenomena. This title includes papers that integrate open systems theory with the pioneering work of Maturana and Varela (1980, 1992) on autopoiesis in biological systems.

Work-related cultural differences, which were familiarized by scholars such as Hall and Hofstede, offer important concepts to help us understand various forms of cooperation and communication. However, the predominant focus of cultural analysis on collectivistic harmony prevents us from gaining an understanding of strategy and conflict. In an attempt to grasp how conflicts are handled, a political analysis can provide new insights. This is illustrated by a comparative study of two CEOs who gave public statements concerning management failure: Shouhei Nozawa (...) of Yamaichi and Paul Smits of KPN. Their statements were strikingly different in several ways, but the classical insights of cross-cultural analysis can only partly explain the differences. This is where political analysis comes in, focusing on interest relationships, responsibilities and virtues, tactics and strategy. (shrink)