Discrimination and violence against women in India often tend to be discussed, framed and explained in cultural terms alone. It is a commonplace assumption that Indian cultural norms are responsible for women's oppression in India and that India's moves to open up the economy to globalisation will usher in modernity and empower women. Another similar assumption is that gendered violence and patriarchal oppression are produced and located primarily in the (Indian traditional) family and community, and that women's entry into the (...) globalised workforce will empower and help them confront and overcome such violence and oppression. This paper attempts to challenge this false binary between ‘family/community/tradition/culture’ and ‘modern political economy’. It looks at the methods used across various sites—household/family, college/university and factory—to subject women's labour and sexuality to a regime of surveillance and gendered discipline. It also looks at the ways in which this regime is disrupted and challenged repeatedly by women's protests. (shrink)

Study of Yatīndramatadīpikā, treatise on Viśiṣṭādvaita metaphysics and epistemology by Śrīnivāsācārya, Son of Govindācārya, active 17th century.

What are the limits of language? How can philosophy be brought closer to everyday life? What is a good human being? These were among the questions that philosophers wrestled with in mid-twentieth-century Britain, a period shadowed by war and the rise of fascism. In response to these events, thinkers such as Philippa Foot (originator of the famous trolley problem), Isaiah Berlin, Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe, Gilbert Ryle, and J. L. Austin aspired to a new level of watchfulness and self-awareness about (...) language as a way of keeping philosophy true to everyday experience. A Terribly Serious Adventure traces the friendships and the rivalries, the shared preoccupations and the passionate disagreements of some of Oxford's most innovative thinkers. Far from being stuck in their ivory towers, the Oxford philosophers lived. They were codebreakers, diplomats, and soldiers in both World Wars, and they often drew on their real-world experience in creating their greatest works, masterpieces of British modernism original in both thought and style. (shrink)

Study of the works of Śrīrāma Śarmā Ācārya, 1911-1990, Hindu philosopher.

Mind-body interactions have been the subject of debate for many generations. However, it is only in recent years that these interactions have become the subject of rigorous scientific enquiry. In recent years there have been major advances in our understanding of the stress process, the endocrine and immune systems, and the methodologies used to investigate these phenomena. As a result, we have witnessed an explosion of research activity in the field known as psychoneuroimmunology - the study of psychological processes and (...) their interaction with the nervous and immune systems. This book presents an up to date account of the human evidence in this field. The first three chapters introduce the reader to the biological systems at the heart of mind/body interactions and the methods used to investigate them. Thereafter, each chapter deals with a separate clinical entity; examining the theoretical basis for mind/body interactions; the associated empirical evidence and directions for future research. With each chapter written by international experts in the field, it provides the reader with an up to date account of the research evidence in the rapidly evolving field of psychoneuroimmunology. (shrink)

A unique study of the earliest recorded "discourses" of the Buddha, taking an approach that is at once psychological, philosophical, and literary. The book is a series of essays on specific passages from the Buddha's original Discourses and is an introduction to the Buddha's radical empiricism for all people who like to read, think, and investigate.

This chapter argues that several aspects of Bernard Williams’s style, methodology, and metaphilosophy can be read as evolving dialectically out of Wittgenstein’s own. After considering Wittgenstein as a stylistic influence on Williams, especially as regards ideals of clarity, precision, and depth, Williams’s methodological debt to Wittgenstein is examined, in particular his anthropological interest in thick concepts and their point. The chapter then turns to Williams’s explicit association, in the 1990s, with a certain form of Wittgensteinianism, which he called ‘Left Wittgensteinianism’. (...) It is shown how this is not a sudden conversion, but the direct product of Williams’s longstanding critical engagement with Wittgenstein’s methodology and metaphilosophy: Williams arrives at this position by envisaging a Wittgensteinianism that thinks in concrete sociohistorical terms, embraces genuine explanation, and relinquishes its insistence on the purity of philosophy. When properly understood, moreover, this critique turns out to be continuous with Williams’s advocacy of a conception of philosophy as a humanistic discipline. Finally, it is shown that Williams inherits from Wittgenstein a certain understanding of how philosophy can help us to live, in particular the therapeutic ambition to liberate us from distortions in our self-understanding by assembling reminders. (shrink)

Bernard Williams thought that philosophy should address real human concerns felt beyond academic philosophy. But what wider concerns are addressed by Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, a book he introduces as being ‘principally about how things are in moral philosophy’? In this article, we argue that Williams responded to the concerns of his day indirectly, refraining from explicitly claiming wider cultural relevance, but hinting at it in the pair of epigraphs that opens the main text. This was Williams’s solution (...) to what he perceived as the stylistic problem of how to pursue philosophy as cultural critique. Taking the epigraphs as interpretative keys to the wider resonances of the book, we show how they reveal Williams’s philosophical concerns – with the primacy of character over method, the obligation to follow orders, and the possibility of combining truth, truthfulness, and a meaningful life in a disillusioned world – to be recognisably rooted in the cultural concerns of post-war Britain. In the light of its epigraphs, the book emerges as the critique of a philosophical tradition’s inadequacies to the special difficulties of its cultural moment. (shrink)

_The education system of Pakistan has always remained a cause of concern mainly for the educators, stakeholders, ruling political parties, students and parents’ community. A lot of effort has been put to upgrade the education system, increase the literacy rate and maintain the interest and motivation of the learner. One of the main reasons lies in the manner, in which the students are assessed, as assessments are considered to be the means of betterment and improvement. The main aim of the (...) study was to identify the views of university students of Karachi, towards the enhancement of motivation, through assessments. It was a quantitative research, in-person survey was conducted to investigate the role assessment plays in enhancing motivation of students. A 5-point Likert scale questionnaire was constructed, to collect the data from two hundred and fifteen, randomly selected university students of Karachi. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 22. The Psychometric Scale exhibited a positive perception of the construct amongst the respondents. The reliability=.76, with the highest M=4.44, regarding teachers’ attitudes and M=4.44 revealing teachers’ remarks have a deep effect on students’ motivation. Conflicts in the family play a vital role in university students' academic motivation with M=4.34._. (shrink)

The English original of Bernard Williams’s Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy was published in 1985. Since its publication, it has provoked a substantial body of philosophical commentary, sympathetic as well as critical. Williams’s introduction to the 1990 French translation of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy is an unusual text and an illuminating new source for readers of Williams. Refreshingly, it reflects an effort on Williams’s part to establish a connection with a new set of readers. It is also (...) the work of a philosopher relishing the freedoms that come from not having to connect with the old one. Does his introduction itself benefit from a further introduction? We believe that it does, and for the same reason that the book needed some prefatory words before it could be put into the hands of French readers: because the work is not, or no longer, fully self-explanatory. (shrink)

This article considers the issue of racial difference in the Goddess movement, using the mythological figure of Arachne, a skilful weaver whom the goddess Athena transformed into a spider, to explore the unequal relational dynamics between white Goddess feminists and women of colour. Bringing Goddess spirituality and thealogical metaphors of webs and weaving into dialogue with postcolonial and black feminist perspectives on the politics of voice, marginality and representation, the article points to some of the ways in which colonial narratives (...) weave through Goddess feminism, including practices of silencing and the romanticization of racial difference. Ultimately, I argue that feminist spirituality must recognize and address structural inequality between white women and women of colour, or in other words, listen to Arachne’s voice. (shrink)

The paper highlights entrepreneurial skills of Indian farmers, informal channels of communications in the socio-cultural setting of the village, tacit knowledge and factors responsible for the adoption of floriculture in open field conditions. It illustrates that the diffusion of new technology in a farming community is dependent on culture-based communication and the tacit knowledge-driven entrepreneurial spirit of a few.

In this paper we investigate the effect of level of understanding revealed by feedback in the form of clarification requests from a route follower on a route giver’s spatial perspective choice in their response in route instruction dialogues. In an experiment varying the level of understanding displayed by route follower clarification requests (the independent variable), route giver perspective switching in response to this feedback is investigated. Three levels of understanding displayed by feedback are investigated: (1) low-level clarification requests indicating that (...) the instruction was not processed, (2) semantic-level clarification requests indicating that the spatial direction given in the instruction could not be resolved as the speaker of the clarification request could not interpret which perspective was intended, and (3) high-level feedback which indicates that the route giver’s instruction was understood but which note an obstacle to following the instruction. Results show that perspective choice, which is a conceptual feature of language use, is sensitive to perceived level of addressee understanding. We found that route givers consistently switch perspectives in responding to semantic-level clarification requests but not in response to low-level ones, and also that switching occurs more for high-level feedback than for low-level feedback. We address how dialogue systems can take advantage of these findings by modelling our results in an Information State model of dialogue, presenting update rules for response generation which account for our findings and also update rules which enable generation of the feedback themselves. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate the effect of level of understanding revealed by feedback in the form of clarification requests from a route follower on a route giver’s spatial perspective choice in their response in route instruction dialogues. In an experiment varying the level of understanding displayed by route follower clarification requests, route giver perspective switching in response to this feedback is investigated. Three levels of understanding displayed by feedback are investigated: low-level clarification requests indicating that the instruction was not (...) processed, semantic-level clarification requests indicating that the spatial direction given in the instruction could not be resolved as the speaker of the clarification request could not interpret which perspective was intended, and high-level feedback which indicates that the route giver’s instruction was understood but which note an obstacle to following the instruction. Results show that perspective choice, which is a conceptual feature of language use, is sensitive to perceived level of addressee understanding. We found that route givers consistently switch perspectives in responding to semantic-level clarification requests but not in response to low-level ones, and also that switching occurs more for high-level feedback than for low-level feedback. We address how dialogue systems can take advantage of these findings by modelling our results in an Information State model of dialogue, presenting update rules for response generation which account for our findings and also update rules which enable generation of the feedback themselves. (shrink)

Moving forward rapidly in the clinical research phase, uterus transplantation may be a future treatment option for women with uterine factor infertility, which accounts for three per cent of all infertility in women. This new method of treatment would allow women, who currently rely on gestational surrogacy or adoption, to gestate and birth their own genetic offspring. Since uterus transplantation carries significant risk when compared with surrogacy and adoption as well as when compared with other organ transplants, it requires greater (...) justification because its goals are quality of life, not life-saving, in their scope. It is important to address questions regarding the physical, psychosocial and ethical risks and benefits of uterus transplantation for all three parties involved—the patient, the donor and the potential child—as well as discuss the regulatory implications as research on uterus transplantations moves forward. (shrink)

The usefulness of machine learning algorithms has led to their widespread adoption prior to the development of a conceptual framework for making sense of them. One common response to this situation is to say that machine learning suffers from a “black box problem.” That is, machine learning algorithms are “opaque” to human users, failing to be “interpretable” or “explicable” in terms that would render categorization procedures “understandable.” The purpose of this paper is to challenge the widespread agreement about the existence (...) and importance of a black box problem. The first section argues that “interpretability” and cognates lack precise meanings when applied to algorithms. This makes the concepts difficult to use when trying to solve the problems that have motivated the call for interpretability. Furthermore, since there is no adequate account of the concepts themselves, it is not possible to assess whether particular technical features supply formal definitions of those concepts. The second section argues that there are ways of being a responsible user of these algorithms that do not require interpretability. In many cases in which a black box problem is cited, interpretability is a means to a further end such as justification or non-discrimination. Since addressing these problems need not involve something that looks like an “interpretation” of an algorithm, the focus on interpretability artificially constrains the solution space by characterizing one possible solution as the problem itself. Where possible, discussion should be reformulated in terms of the ends of interpretability. (shrink)

Scholarship historicizing John Rawls has put paid to the view that his work was without precedent. This article sets out to find out why, then, A Theory of Justice stirred such philosophical excitement, even among British philosophers in a position to recognize its antecedents. I advance the view that his work is helpfully understood as fulfilling the promise of the “naturalist” revival in ethics begun at Oxford by Philippa Foot and Elizabeth Anscombe. After briefly surveying the development of analytic philosophy, (...) I argue that Rawls's contribution was to reconceive ethics so that it was an investigation neither of an independent ethical reality nor of the logic of moral language. Rather, it was concerned with a class of facts about ourselves. Rawls's practice of ethics adopts as its central focus the ongoing human practice of justification. I place Rawls's turn from religious faith to justification between persons alongside similar shifts in Plato's Euthyphro and in the biographies of Kant and Sidgwick. I try to show the distinctiveness of Rawls's focus by contrasting his search for human self-understanding with the project of R. M. Hare, his most prominent non-naturalist critic, who charged Rawls with offering an inadequate account of the authority of ethics. (shrink)

Classical commentary with supercommentary on Yogasūtra of Patañjali; critical edition with exhaustive study.

For stakeholders, such as investors and lenders, to appropriately assess a company's financial performance, the reported accounting earnings must closely reflect the economic reality of the organization's financial activity throughout the reporting period. The degree to which reported earnings capture economic reality is called earnings quality. Managers have an ethical obligation to report high quality earnings to interested stakeholders in a timely matter. Accounting research has identified conditions within an organization, such as management compensation contracts and pending litigation that can (...) impact earnings quality. We extend this line of research by exploring whether another characteristic of an organization, gender diversity in senior management, influences the quality of reported earnings. Companies with more women in senior management are found to be more profitable and have higher stock returns after initial public offerings than those with fewer women in the management ranks. Our findings suggest that the improved bottom line for companies with more women senior executives is not produced through the management of earnings or lower quality earnings. Instead, earnings quality is positively associated with gender diversity in senior management. (shrink)

Research teams have made considerable progress in treating absolute uterine factor infertility through uterus transplantation, though studies have differed on the choice of either deceased or living donors. While researchers continue to analyze the medical feasibility of both approaches, little attention has been paid to the ethics of using deceased versus living donors as well as the protections that must be in place for each. Both types of uterus donation also pose unique regulatory challenges, including how to allocate donated organs; (...) whether the donor / donor's family has any rights to the uterus and resulting child; how to manage contact between the donor / donor's family, recipient, and resulting child; and how to track outcomes moving forward. (shrink)

There is a dearth of business ethics research on family firms, despite the importance of such firms to the US economy. We answer Vazquez’s call to examine the intersection of family-firm research and business ethics, by investigating whether external auditors assess higher risk of fraud in family firms. We test the contradictory predictions of two dominant theoretical perspectives in family-firm research—entrenchment theory and alignment theory. We conduct an experiment with highly experienced external audit professionals, who assess the risk of fraud (...) and make client acceptance decisions for family firms versus non-family firms with different strength of corporate governance: strong versus weak audit committees. We find that auditors assess the risk of fraud as higher for family firms than for non-family firms, consistent with the predictions of entrenchment theory. Auditors are also less likely to make client acceptance recommendations for family firms. The strength of the AC moderates the family-firm effect, whereby auditors assess family firms with weak ACs to have the highest fraud risk and to be the least desirable audit clients. Our findings suggest that auditors perceive more severe agency conflicts to be present in family firms than in non-family firms, consistent with entrenchment theory, according to which family members may behave opportunistically to extract rents and potentially expropriate the firm’s resources at the expense of minority shareholders. (shrink)

This study examined whether transformational leadership would be affected by the predominance of a particular guna in a leader and his or her belief in Karma Yoga. An experiment was conducted using a sample of 110 marketing executives working in a financial services firm in eastern India. A 2 × 2 + 1 factorial design was used to manipulate the three gunas and Karma Yoga. Sattva and rajas were crossed with Karma Yoga to produce four cells, with tamas being the (...) fifth cell. Transformational leadership was the measured variable. Results show that compared to rajas, sattva enhances transformational leadership, whereas tamas reduces it. Further, Karma Yoga enhances transformational leadership when the leader is sattvic, but does not enhance transformational leadership when the leader is rajasic. Results imply that organizations interested in enhancing transformational leadership should develop s attvic qualities in their managers and encourage them to be duty oriented. (shrink)

Women with opioid use disorder (OUD) face unique challenges meeting their reproductive goals. Because the rate of unintended pregnancy in this population is almost 80 percent, there has been a push to increase the use of contraceptives among reproductive-aged women with OUD.1 The patient-level ethical issues of such initiatives, however, are often overlooked. This review discusses the ethical issues in two realms: obtaining contraception when it is desired and avoiding contraceptive coercion when contraception is not desired. It is important that (...) access to reproductive education and care be improved to ensure autonomous decision making by women with OUD. It is also necessary to be mindful of the history of oppressive and coercive contraception and sterilization policies in the United States. These policies have left a legacy of mistrust and continue to be manifested in the form of more subtly oppressive policies in contemporary medical practice. Such policies point to the ongoing stigmatization of, and implicit biases held against, women with OUD. Based on these ethical issues, solutions are suggested at the clinical, systemic, and societal levels. (shrink)

A comprehensive model of moral development must encompass moral sensitivity, moral reasoning, moral motivation, and moral character. Western models of moral development have often failed to show validity outside the culture of their origin. We propose Karma-Yoga, the technique of intelligent action discussed in the Bhagawad Gita as an Indian model for moral development. Karma-Yoga is conceptualized as made up of three dimensions viz. duty-orientation, indifference to rewards, and equanimity. Based on survey results from 459 respondents from two large Indian (...) organizations, we show that the dimensions of Karma-Yoga are related to moral sensitivity, moral motivation, and moral character. (shrink)

The impact of 2-year residential fulltime MBA program on students' values was studied using a longitudinal design and data collected over 7 years from a business school in India. Values were measured when students entered the program, and again when they graduated. Sample in Study 1 consisted of 229 students from three consecutive graduating classes. Rank-order or ipsative measure of values was used. Results of matched sample t-tests show that self-oriented values like a comfortable life and pleasure become more important (...) and others-oriented values like being helpful and polite become less important over 2 years. The moderating role of sex and functional specialization are also analyzed. Study 2 used a non-ipsative measure of values and a sample of 138 students from two consecutive graduating classes. Results show that management education enhances self-monitoring and importance of self-oriented values and reduces the importance of others-oriented values. The effect on both sets of values remains significant even after controlling for self-monitoring. (shrink)

This article investigates the scope of a firm's enterprise strategy which is defined as the range of stakeholder satisfaction realized by a firm at a particular point in time. We found that prior profitability and several of the firm's grand strategies were correlated with enterprise strategy scope. Furthermore, environmental munificence was found to have a curvilinear relationship with enterprise strategy. Overall, this study refined and extended our understanding of enterprise strategy and stakeholder management.

In this article I argue that the Critical Kant endorses the claim that God creates the best possible world, and that this claim is best understood as committing him to the view that God creates an infinitely valuable world. Kant’s understudied Critical theory of the best possible world differs significantly from his better-known quasi-Leibnizian pre-Critical account insofar as it uses an axiological rather than ontological metric for the goodness of worlds. The axiological metric introduces unique challenges for a Kantian account (...) of the best possible world. These challenges are in turn resolved via an infinite value interpretation. (shrink)

Opponents of male circumcision have increasingly used human rights positions to articulate their viewpoint. We characterize the meaning of the term “human rights.” We discuss these human rights arguments with special attention to the claims of rights to an open future and to bodily integrity. We offer a three-part test under which a parental decision might be considered an unacceptable violation of a child's right. The test considers the impact of the practice on society, the impact of the practice on (...) the individual, and the likelihood of adverse impact. Infant circumcision is permissible under this test. We conclude that infant circumcision may be proscribed as violating local norms, even though it does not violate human rights. (shrink)

Healthcare in the United States is most often described and experienced as an immense, convoluted industry with a sum greater than its parts. However, it is important to remember that these parts are distinct, autonomous individuals and entities with their own beliefs, customs, and viewpoints. Moral issues surface abundantly in healthcare due to its interconnectedness with human life with enhanced proximity during life’s beginning and end. Therefore, these individual beliefs are prone to clashing as seen in three key relationships: between (...) patient and provider, between providers, and between industry and providers. While this is both to be expected and respected, it is important to remember that all individuals and entities involved in healthcare do have one major duty in common – the welfare of the patient. Unfortunately, legislature at both the state and federal levels and organizational policies have been too willing to endanger the welfare of patients for the sake of balancing the individual consciences involved. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 7, Page 58-59, July 2012.

The relationships between transformational leadership and followers’ karma yoga, spirituality, organizational identification and normative organizational commitment were studied using a sample of 144 teachers of a prominent high school in western India. Spirituality is the goal of all existence according to the Upanishads, and karma yoga is a simple means to enhance spirituality. It was hypothesized that karma yoga enhances spirituality, transformational leadership enhances karma yoga and spirituality, and all the three in turn enhance organizational identification and normative organizational commitment. (...) Results of structural equations analysis shows that transformational leadership enhances followers’ karma yoga; both transformational leadership and karma yoga enhance followers’ oneness with all beings: both transformational leadership and oneness enhance organizational identification; and both karma yoga and organizational identification enhance normative commitment. The implications of transformational leadership addressing both followers’ real needs and organizational interests are discussed. (shrink)