Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get there. Findings suggest that envisioned future systems will need (...) to be much more collaborative, open, diverse, egalitarian, and able to work with values and systemic issues. They will also need to go beyond producing knowledge about our world to generating wisdom about how to act within it. To get to envisioned systems we will need to rapidly scale methodological innovations, connect innovators, and creatively accelerate learning about working with intractable challenges. We will also need to create new funding schemes, a global knowledge commons, and challenge deeply held assumptions. To genuinely be a creative force in supporting longevity of human and non-human life on our planet, the shift in knowledge systems will probably need to be at the scale of the enlightenment and speed of the scientific and technological revolution accompanying the second World War. This will require bold and strategic action from governments, scientists, civic society and sustained transformational intent. (shrink)

Voelker offers a powerful, inclusive practice that is appropriate for new students or long-time practitioners-and can easily be adopted by yoga instructors, educators, medical professionals, exercise professionals, caretakers, or community workers for work with their clients, students, and patients. This book highlights 40 active and restorative poses, including individual and partner poses, breathing techniques, and meditation practices, all adapted so that students never have to leave their chairs. For every pose, Voelker offers at least three different ways of experiencing it, (...) depending on an individual's level of flexibility and suggests ways to incorporate breath work and chanting. Voelker includes healthy lifestyle, practices and teaching tips, along with yoga philosophy "lessons" throughout. Voelker believes that yoga is only yoga when you make it your own; otherwise it's just exercise. It becomes therapeutic, and even transformational, when the poses, breathing techniques, and meditation practices morph and change to fit your unique body, mind, and heart. The yoga she presents is designed to encourage you to experience the joy in every pose; to celebrate your unique qualities; and to stretch your imagination and creativity, as well as your body and your mind, in ways that feel just right for you. (shrink)

Specters of venality -- The mystic challenge -- The curse of quietism -- Spinoza's ghost -- The sleep of reason -- The politics of alienation -- Revolutionary reveries.

In 1889, TheBritish Medical Journalpublished a piece titled, “Detective Medicine,” which describes feats of medical detection performed by physicians attending malingering prisoners. Though simulating illness had a long history, the medicalization of malingering at thefin de siècleled to a proliferation of such case histories and cheerful records of pathological feigners thwarted.

Because of the widespread feminine priority that makes it the receptacle of śakti, India is definitely “one of the last bastions of the Mother,” as is pointed out in a recent book. If in fact there is a “maternalistic” culture it is certainly that of India, in spite of the legal regime, in which the element of affectionate magic characterizing all life and all organic intimacy is affirmed through the warm symbiosis of mother-child love. A miracle of that absolute love (...) incarnated with a natural serenity by millions of mothers dispensing a felicitous affectionate security, instilled in the Indian soul throughout its entire life. The traits of the Hindu personality and the principle content of its culture are organized and ordered around this center, characterized by an extraordinary coherence. Since its construction begins with this “dual unity” the Hindu personality has necessarily the popolarity of fusion-separation as a pivot. This is the central theme of S. Kakar, who, basing his conclusions on results of clinical psychoanalyses of Hindu individuals as well as on contributions from the collective imagination (folklore and myths) claims to discern the ontogenetic source of the supreme ideal of deliverance (mokṣa) in early childhood and, more specifically, in the strong unconscious desire to find again the benevolent presence of the “good mother”. (shrink)

With rapid changes in urban living today, peoples’ behavioural patterns and spatial practices undergo a constant process of adaptation and negotiation. Using “house” as a laboratory and everyday life and spatial relations of residents as a framework of analysis, the paper examines the spatial planning concepts in traditional and contemporary Iranian architecture and the associated socio-cultural practices. Discussions are drawn upon from a pilot study conducted in the city of Kerman, to investigate ways in which contemporary housing solutions can better (...) cater to the continually changing socio-cultural lifestyles of residents. Data collection for the study involved a series of participatory workshops and employed creative visual research methods, participant observation and semi structured interviews to examine the interlacing of everyday socio-spatial relations and changing perception of identity, belonging, socio-cultural and religious values and conflict. The inferences from the study showcases the emerging social and cultural needs and practices of people manifested through the complex relationship between residents, the places in which they live, and its spatial planning and organisation. For a better understanding of this complex relationship, the paper argues the need for resituating spatiality as a socio-cultural paradigm. (shrink)

Bloom provides a detailed account of children's word learning and comprehension. Yet, this book falls short of explaining the developmental process of word learning. The studies reviewed do not explain how infants begin to map words onto objects or the environment's facilitative role. Researchers must describe how several factors interact and explain the relative importance of each during the development of word learning.

Les saṃskāra et leurs fonctions, dans le brâhmanisme et l'hindouisme, dans la tradition bouddhique. Les six darsana principaux.

Analytical study of the principles of Advaita philosophy of Śaṅkarācārya.

This article provides empirical data on the dynamics of marital bargaining in the use of in vitro fertilization in male infertility and the extent of the woman's agency in trying to resolve the situation, using interview data from nine married couples and three additional wives. Although there were too few cases for demographic variation among the categories, the research did indicate that choice and altruism entailed dynamics distinguishable from patriarchal bargains, and, if there was subtle coercion, it was exerted in (...) ways quite different from that experienced by the wives who felt openly pressured. (shrink)

Vietnam is a vibrant and emerging South East Asian economy. However, the country faces a challenging task in meeting rising energy demand and the need to securitize energy while addressing the negative environmental impact of fossil fuel utilization. Growing concerns about sustainable development have led Vietnam to develop civilian nuclear energy for electricity generation. Nuclear power is widely recognized as a clean, mature and reliable energy source. Its inclusion in Vietnam’s energy mix by 2030 is expected to supplement other energy (...) sources from fossil fuel, hydropower plants, renewable resources and energy imports. Despite strong reservations in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, Vietnam has pursued its national nuclearization program. Civilian nuclear energy development has been widely regarded as a controversial issue, although it is intended for peaceful purposes and as a solution for long-term energy security. Anxiety over nuclear safety measures, inadequate nuclear regulatory mechanisms, lack of institutionalized radioactive waste management, the threat of nuclear accident, theft and terrorism, and nuclear proliferation have marred public perception. The apprehension towards nuclear energy development has raised serious questions on the ethics and risks of the technology. Using a qualitative approach of reviewing published scholarly research, we investigated the ethical and risk issues that manifest in civilian nuclear energy development in Vietnam. Our findings reveal that the conundrum of civilian nuclear energy revolves around balancing energy security, environment preservation and societal well-being with ethical and risk predicaments of nuclear energy. (shrink)

Ethical considerations in today’s businesses are manifold and range from human rights issues and the well-being of employees to income inequality and environmental sustainability. Regardless of the specific topic being investigated, an integral part of business ethics research consists of deeply comprehending the personal meanings, intentions, behaviors, judgements, and attitudes that people possess. To this end, researchers are often encouraged to use more qualitative methods to understand the dynamic and fuzzy field of business ethics, which involves collecting in-depth information in (...) real time. Qualitative methods in business ethics research, however, raise the two-fold responsibility of not only conducting such investigations fairly and appropriately, but also clearly communicating the research processes and outcomes to readers. Especially leading journals in the field such as Journal of Business Ethics have a responsibility to conduct their business ethically, by making sure that their content represents clear and honest communications of research concerning a wide range of business systems. Unfortunately, the question of how to effectively facilitate transparent insight into the research process of qualitative business ethics studies is still unresolved. Both the lack of a clear communication of methods and results and the iterative nature of qualitative methods often make it difficult for the readers to properly assess a qualitative business ethics study and understand its results. We propose the use of narratives to remedy this situation. Specifically, we suggest a new classification of audits, named second-party audits, to facilitate a better understanding of research procedures ex-post for the readers. To illustrate this new narrative-based reconceptualization of audits, we use Agatha Christie’s detective novel The Murder on the Links as a frame of reference. (shrink)

The misleading and propagandistic tendencies in American news reporting have been a part of public discussion from its earliest days as a republic (Innis, 2007;Sheppard, 2007). “Fake news” is hardly new (McKernon, 1925), and the term has been applied to a variety of distinct phenomenon ranging from satire to news, which one may find disagreeable (Jankowski, 2018;Tandoc et al., 2018). However, this problem has become increasingly acute in recent years with the Macquarie Dictionary declaring “fake news” the word of the (...) year in 2016 (Lavoipierre, 2017). The international recognition of fake news as a problem (Pomerantsev and Weiss, 2014;Applebaum and Lucas, 2016) has led to a number of initiatives to mitigate perceived causes, with varying levels of success (Flanagin and Metzger, 2014;Horne and Adali, 2017;Sample et al., 2018). The inability to create a holistic solution continues to stymie researchers and vested parties. A significant contributor to the problem is the interdisciplinary nature of digital deception. While technology enables the rapid and wide dissemination of digitally deceptive data, the design and consumption of data rely on a mixture of psychology, sociology, political science, economics, linguistics, marketing, and fine arts. The authors for this effort discuss deception’s history, both old and new, from an interdisciplinary viewpoint and then proceed to discuss how various disciplines contribute to aiding in the detection and countering of fake news narratives. A discussion of various fake news types (printed, staged events, altered photographs, and deep fakes) ensues with the various technologies being used to identify these; the shortcomings of those technologies and finally the insights offered by the other disciplines can be incorporated to improve outcomes. A three-point evaluation model that focuses on contextual data evaluation, pattern spread, and archival analysis of both the author and publication archives is introduced. While the model put forth cannot determine fact from fiction, the ability to measure distance from fact across various domains provides a starting point for evaluating the veracity of a new story. (shrink)

Some popular views of Ernst Mach cast him as a philosopher-scientist averse to imaginative practices in science. The aim of this analysis is to address the question of whether or not imagination is compatible with Machian philosophy of science. I conclude that imagination is not only compatible, but essential to realizing the aim of science in Mach’s biologico-economical view. I raise the possible objection that my conclusion is undermined by Mach’s criticism of Isaac Newton’s famous “bucket experiment.” I conclude that (...) Mach’s issue lies not with thought experimentation, tout court, but with the improper use of thought experimentation as it relates to the aim of the biologico-economical development of science. (shrink)

Along with potential benefits to healthcare delivery, machine learning healthcare applications raise a number of ethical concerns. Ethical evaluations of ML-HCAs will need to structure th...

Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers – often implicitly – assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is (...) substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species – frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior – hence, there are no obviousa priorigrounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions ofhumannature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges. (shrink)

This paper serves three specific goals. First, it reports the development of an Indian Asian face set, to serve as a free resource for psychological research. Second, it examines whether the use of pre-tested U.S.-specific norms for stimulus selection or weighting may introduce experimental confounds in studies involving non-U.S. face stimuli and/or non-U.S. participants. Specifically, it examines whether subjective impressions of the face stimuli are culturally dependent, and the extent to which these impressions reflect social stereotypes and ingroup favoritism. Third, (...) the paper investigates whether differences in face familiarity impact accuracy in identifying face ethnicity. To this end, face images drawn from volunteers in India as well as a subset of Caucasian face images from the Chicago Face Database were presented to Indian and U.S. participants, and rated on a range of measures, such as perceived attractiveness, warmth, and social status. Results show significant differences in the overall valence of ratings of ingroup and outgroup faces. In addition, the impression ratings show minor differentiation along two basic stereotype dimensions, competence and trustworthiness, but not warmth. We also find participants to show significantly greater accuracy in correctly identifying the ethnicity of ingroup faces, relative to outgroup faces. This effect is found to be mediated by ingroup-outgroup differences in perceived group typicality of the target faces. Implications for research on intergroup relations in a cross-cultural context are discussed. (shrink)

This volume, an important contribution to dialogic and Bakhtin studies, shows the natural fit between Bakhtin’s ideas and the pluralistic culture of India to a global academic audience. It is premised on the fact that long before principles of dialogism took shape in the Western world, these ideas, though not labelled as such, were an integral part of intellectual histories in India. Bakhtin’s ideas and intellectual traditions of India stand under the same banner of plurality, open-endedness and diversity of languages (...) and social speech types and, therefore, the affinity between the thinker and the culture seems natural. Rather than being a mechanical import of Bakhtin’s ideas, it is an occasion to reclaim, reactivate and reenergize inherent dialogicality in the Indian cultural, historical and philosophical histories. Bakhtin is not an incidental figure, for he offers precise analytical tools to make sense of the incredibly complex differences at every level in the cultural life of India. Indian heterodoxy lends well to a Bakhtinian reading and analysis and the papers herein attest to this. The papers range from how ideas from Indo-European philology reached Bakhtin through a circuitous route, to responses to Bakhtin’s thought on the carnival from the philosophical perspectives of Abhinavagupta, to a Bakhtinian reading of literary texts from India. The volume also includes an essay on ‘translation as dialogue’ – an issue central to multilingual cultures – and on inherent dialogicality in the long intellectual traditions in India. (shrink)

Exploring long-term educational change, we investigate our re/construction of research methodology as we moved from a positivist framework to working with ideas drawn from Deleuze and Guattari. We reveal our becoming rhizomatic in data analysis in the metamodelling of the richness flowing horizontally through our practices. We tell of our struggles to escape hierarchical thinking and relations researching between the smooth and striated. A space of interactions, conversations and writings created relations between polyphonic voices, leading us to an emergent methodology. (...) Our struggle against hierarchies in data analysis yielded rich educational possibilities for becoming that Deleuzo-Guattarian thinking offers us. (shrink)

Some popular views of Ernst Mach cast him as a philosopher-scientist averse to imaginative practices in science. The aim of this analysis is to address the question of whether or not imagination is compatible with Machian philosophy of science. I conclude that imagination is not only compatible but essential to realizing the aim of science in Mach’s biologico-economical view. I raise the possible objection that my conclusion is undermined by Mach’s criticism of Isaac Newton’s famous “bucket experiment.” I conclude that (...) Mach’s issue lies not with thought experimentation, tout court, but with the improper use of thought experimentation as it relates to the aim of the biologico-economical development of science. (shrink)

"First published by Oxford University Press, 1916."--Title page verso.

Zusammenfassung. Im Wandel vom paternalistischen zum partnerschaftlichen Arzt-Patient-Verhältnis werden auch Konfliktsituationen am Ende des Lebens aus einem anderen Blickwinkel gesehen. Der Fortschritt der Intensivmedizin und die zunehmende Zahl chronisch Kranker schaffen hier neue ethische Probleme. Am Fall eines Patienten, der an einer Amyotrophen Lateralsklerose litt, wird der Autonomiekonflikt zwischen Selbst- und Fremdbestimmung verdeutlicht. Juristische, medizinische und ethische Argumente werden fallbezogen dargestellt und der Stellenwert von Patientenverfügungen und das derzeitige deutsche Betreuungsrecht diskutiert.

Does all conscious experience essentially involve self-consciousness? In his Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person, Dan Zahavi answers “yes”. I criticize three core arguments offered in support of this answer—a well-known regress argument, what I call the “interview argument,” and a phenomenological argument. Drawing on Sartre, I introduce a phenomenological contrast between plain experience and self-conscious experience. The contrast challenges the thesis that conscious experience entails self-consciousness.

This article speaks of a debate in contemporary India: that surrounding the validity of enacting a civil code that applies uniformly to all communities and religions in the state. In certain feminist arguments, such a code is seen as possibly providing a sphere of rights to Indian women that is alternative to the rights – or wrongs – given to them by the plural religious laws, which form the basis of the civil law in India. India, however, is a heterogeneous (...) polity, encompassing a diversity of cultures and religions, some dominant and others forming minorities. Given these differences, some critics see the feminist call for a Uniform Civil Code as an essentialist move that prioritises gender over other agendas and politics. They argue that the site of the ‚universal’ in this feminist move is a liberal site that inherently excludes marginalised Others and benefits the dominant subjects in India. In my article, I contest this critique and question whether the site of the universal and its authorial subject in postcolonial India is, in fact, an exclusionary liberal ruse of power. I draw insights from the history of the formation of the postcolonial nation-state in India to posit an experience of the state and the universal within it, which is alternative to the Western liberal model. The aim of this article is, therefore, not so much to debate the in/validity of a Uniform Civil Code, as to address certain contemporary post-structuralist critiques of the site of the universal in postcolonial India and posit a departure from them, based on perspectives drawn from history. (shrink)

Highlights: -/- • -/- Proposes forward-looking approach to studying climate collapse risks. • -/- Suggests diminishing returns on climate adaptation as a collapse mechanism. • -/- Suggests strategies for sustainable adaptation pathways in face of climate change. • -/- Illustrates analysis with examples of small island states and global food security. -/- Abstract: -/- This article proposes a forward-looking approach to studying societal collapse risks related to climate change. Such an approach should indicate how to study emerging collapse risks and (...) suggest strategies for adapting to them. Our approach is based on three postulates that facilitate a forward-looking approach: (1) collapse, if it occurred, would be a lengthy process rather than an abrupt event; (2) significant collapse risks already exist in some places; and (3) diminishing returns on adaptation to intensifying climate impacts are a key driver of collapse risks. The first two postulates suggests that collapse risks can be studied in process, while the third points to strategies for adaptation pathways that avoid unsustainable diminishing returns. Applying diminishing returns to climate change adaptation, rather than sociopolitical complexity or resource extraction, is also a novel theoretical contribution to collapse literature. [Open access]. (shrink)

Answering the design questions inherent to building and deploying machine learning tools —based on algorithms that can learn from and make predictions on large data sets without being explicitl...

Joseph J. Fins calls for a reconsideration of severe brain injury treatment, including discussion of public policy and physician advocacy.

Since the very beginning, Confucianism has been troubled by a serious gap between its political ideals and the reality of societal circumstances. Contemporary Confucians must develop a viable method of governance that can retain the spirit of the Confucian ideal while tackling problems arising from nonideal modern situations. The best way to meet this challenge, Joseph Chan argues, is to adopt liberal democratic institutions that are shaped by the Confucian conception of the good rather than the liberal conception of (...) the right.Confucian Perfectionism examines and reconstructs both Confucian political thought and liberal democratic institutions, blending them to form a new Confucian political philosophy. Chan decouples liberal democratic institutions from their popular liberal philosophical foundations in fundamental moral rights, such as popular sovereignty, political equality, and individual sovereignty. Instead, he grounds them on Confucian principles and redefines their roles and functions, thus mixing Confucianism with liberal democratic institutions in a way that strengthens both. Then he explores the implications of this new yet traditional political philosophy for fundamental issues in modern politics, including authority, democracy, human rights, civil liberties, and social justice.Confucian Perfectionism critically reconfigures the Confucian political philosophy of the classical period for the contemporary era. (shrink)

José Benardete developed a famous paradox involving a beginningless set of items each member of which satisfies some predicate just in case no earlier member satisfies it. The Grim Reaper version of this paradox has recently been employed in favor of various finitist metaphysical theses, ranging from temporal finitism to causal finitism to the discrete nature of time. Here, I examine a new challenge to these finitist arguments—namely, the challenge of implying that the future cannot be endless. In particular, I (...) develop future-oriented Benardete paradoxes and examine their epistemic symmetry with past-oriented paradoxes. (shrink)

Rigid designators for concrete objects and for properties -- On the coherence of the distinction -- On whether the distinction assigns to rigidity the right role -- A uniform treatment of property designators as singular terms -- Rigid appliers -- Rigidity - associated arguments in support of theoretical identity statements: on their significance and the cost of its philosophical resources -- The skeptical argument impugning psychophysical identity statements: on its significance and the cost of its philosophical resources -- The skeptical (...) argument further examined: on resources, allegedly overlooked, for confirming psychological identities. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung. Im Wandel vom paternalistischen zum partnerschaftlichen Arzt-Patient-Verhältnis werden auch Konfliktsituationen am Ende des Lebens aus einem anderen Blickwinkel gesehen. Der Fortschritt der Intensivmedizin und die zunehmende Zahl chronisch Kranker schaffen hier neue ethische Probleme. Am Fall eines Patienten, der an einer Amyotrophen Lateralsklerose litt, wird der Autonomiekonflikt zwischen Selbst- und Fremdbestimmung verdeutlicht. Juristische, medizinische und ethische Argumente werden fallbezogen dargestellt und der Stellenwert von Patientenverfügungen und das derzeitige deutsche Betreuungsrecht diskutiert.

Contemporary responses to Plato’s Republic rarely examine its complex relationship to festivals and sacrifice. Recovering the importance of the festival to Plato’s concerns, this article reveals Plato’s displacement of the sacrificial violence of ancient Greek festivals with the language and possibilities of money. The first section introduces, through the opening scenes of the Republic, the significance of money in Ancient Greece, particularly its affiliation with the ritual dynamics of the festival. The second section focuses on animal sacrifice, developing the central (...) claim that much of the Republic imagines replacing the power of sacrifice to hold a conflicted polis together with the logic of money to organize and maintain the city. To explore the ramifications of this shift, the third section of the essay turns to the problems of visibility and sacrifice, arguing that the shift from festival to monetary political practice obscures the violence of political and monetary life; an obscurity reproduced in Giorgio Agamben’s neglect of ancient Greece in his account of the relationship between sacrifice and political status. This reading provokes an engagement with the contemporary acceptance of monetary violence leading to the conclusion that the violence and death resulting from monetary practice should be considered political violence, not sacrifice. (shrink)