The self-disorder model provides a phenomenological framework for understanding how the core symptoms of Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders (SSDs) are rooted in an instability of minimal selfhood. This instability involves a range of “anomalous experiences”: transformations in an individual’s perceptual field and sense of being an agent of action. The explanatory value of this theoretical model can be summarized in two claims about the role of anomalous experiences in self-disorders: (1) anomalous experiences express a common trait-like disturbance that is characteristic of (...) SSDs, and (2) anomalous experiences contribute to explanations regarding how self-disorders progress into SSDs. While hypotheses consistent with the first claim have been substantiated in several studies, hypotheses consistent with the second claim remain underexamined. We argue that attending to this gap in the literature requires considering which methodological strategies are best suited for investigating if and how anomalous experiences contribute to the development of self-disorders into SSDs and psychotic states. Network modeling is discussed as one such strategy suitable for examining the role of anomalies of lived-world in the maintenance of paranoid delusions in SSDs. (shrink)

This case report illustrates the ethical issues involved in paediatric liver transplantation, especially in terms of assessing recipient suitability and the role of parents as donors. Ms. X was a child with advanced chronic liver disease who undergone an elective living donor liver transplant with her father as the donor. Post-operatively, she was in a critically ill state as a result of acute liver graft failure with resultant multi-organ dysfunction. A re-transplant was done at 36 hours after the first one, (...) this time with her mother as the donor. She responded well to the transplant, however by post-operative day 8, it was evident that she had features of severe brain stem dysfunction and brain death was subsequently certified. The ethical issues that arise from this case, including the need for careful assessment of recipient suitability for a transplant and the specific considerations of using parents as organ donors, are discussed. (shrink)

Generalisation, universal knowledge claims, and recommendations within disaster studies are problematic because they lead to miscommunication and the misapplication of actionable knowledge. The consequences and impacts thereof are not often considered by experts; forgone as irrelevant to the academic division of labour. There is a disconnect between expert assertions for disaster risk reduction (DRR) and their practical suitability for laypersons. Experts currently assert independently of the context within which protective action measures (PAMs) are to be used, measures unconnected to the (...) people for whom they are developed. This has knock-on effects for DRR: much expert-generated science and policy remains unused, unimplemented, and sometimes misapplied. I use philosophical accounts of assertion and epistemic blame to highlight the epistemic relationship between experts and laypersons. This relationship includes responsibilities and agreements between epistemic agents. Since multilevel DRR knowledge still transfers top-down from experts to laypersons, if experts impair the epistemic relationship, they can be held epistemically blameworthy. To address the pervasiveness of top-down systems, I analyse the epistemic framings and narratives currently shaping DRR, and more specifically PAMs and campaigns. I deconstruct universal perspectives that dominate the epistemic processes of generating, disseminating, and implementing DRR knowledge and specifically for co-seismic landslide PAMs for Nepal. I argue for more inclusive, contextual, and epistemically responsible DRR. Co-production of knowledge should begin from the standpoints of marginalised persons who may have an epistemic advantage due to their socio-politically marginalised positions. Often these epistemic contributions are left out of DRR efforts because marginalised persons are rarely afforded equal, if any, epistemic agency, which results in epistemic gaps and a large pool of relevant knowledge remaining unincorporated and unused in DRR research and policy. (shrink)

What is Brahman? What is its relationship to Atman? What is an individual's place in the cosmos? Is a personalised god and ritualistic worship the only path to attain moksha? Does caste matter when a human is engaging with the metaphysical world? The answers to these perennial questions sparkle with clarity in this seminal account of a man, and a saint, who revived Hinduism and gave to Upanishadic insights a rigorously structured and sublimely appealing philosophy. Jagad Guru Adi Shankaracharya (788-820 (...) CE) was born in Kerala and died in Kedarnath, traversing the length of India in his search for the ultimate truth. In a short life of thirty-two years, Shankaracharya not only revived Hinduism, but also created the organisational structure for its perpetuation through the mathas he established in Sringeri, Dwaraka, Puri, and Joshimatha. Adi Shankaracharaya: Hinduism's Greatest Thinker is a meticulously researched and comprehensive account of his life and philosophy. Highly readable, and including a select anthology of Shankaracharya's seminal writing, the book also examines the startling endorsement that contemporary science is giving to his ideas today. A must-read for people across the ideological spectrum, this book reminds readers about the remarkable philosophical underpinning of Hinduism, making it one of the most vibrant religions in the world. (shrink)

The year 2017 has dawned in a new era. This is an era where cyber terrorism and cyber extremism are increasingly going to be significant factors in our day-to-day lives. Whether we like it or not, today social media platforms are infiltrated with cyber terrorists and cyber extremists. In addition, Cyber radicalization as a phenomenon is constantly on the rise.

This article reports from the International Conference on Cyberlaw, Cybercrime & Cybersecurity. The Conference was addressed by more than 150 speakers backed by more than 80 supporters. It was a wonderful opportunity to network with international thought leaders under one roof.

In this essay, I argue that the Indian state’s response to the Maoist insurgency has been ideologically shaped by the “new terrorism” discourse cultivated by Western powers, particularly by the United States. Following the post-9/11 othering of Islamic terrorism as a trope of a “civilizational clash” between East and West, the Indian state has strategically demarcated the regions affected by the Maoist armed insurgency as the “Red Corridor,” conceiving the insurgency as “the single biggest threat to the internal security of (...) the nation.” The domestic othering of the Red Corridor as an “unpatriotic,” “undemocratic,” “contaminated,” or even a “diseased zone” is further exacerbated by the systemic demonization, criminalization, and depoliticization of the Maoist insurgency through state-sponsored propaganda. In the attempt to uncover the implied collusion and complicity between the U.S.-led “war on terror” and India’s “war with the Maoists,” I draw on Hamid Dabashi’s view of “post-Orientalism,” Giorgio Agamben’s notion of “bare life,” and Achille Mbembe’s coinage of “necropolitics.”. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhen Manchester United Football Club publicly announced the signing of Alexis Sanchez in 2018, it was done through a short video that purported to demonstrate the rich traditions and...

ABSTRACT When Manchester United Football Club publicly announced the signing of Alexis Sanchez in 2018, it was done through a short video that purported to demonstrate the rich traditions and history of the club, its deep connection with its fanbase, and the strength of its support. However, locating this video within the broader social order where elite football clubs like MUFC essentially operate as for-profit corporations shows how it functions as an instantiation of the market-oriented discourse and rhetoric that has (...) penetrated sport in general. Taking up a Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies perspective, and via an analysis of the semiotics of sound, intertextuality, and the visual, this article shows how MUFC positions itself sympathetically and in so doing conceals its pursuit of profit. It shows how values of solidarity, organicity, and camaraderie are communicated and associated with MUFC and how the viewer is structured into identifying with MUFC instead of supporters as a collective group. Finally, it discusses how these tropes are aestheticized whilst outwardly claiming to deny that very pursuit, thereby masking the reconstrual of club-supporter relations as fundamentally exploitative brand–consumer relations. (shrink)

Paul Grice has given an account of conversational implicatures that hinges on the hypothesis that communication is a cooperative activity performed by rational agents which pursue a common goal. The attempt to derive Grice’s principles from game theory is a natural step, since its aim is to predict the behaviour of rational agents in situations where the outcome of one agent’s choice depends also on the choices of others. Generalised conversational implicatures, and in particular scalar ones, offer an ideal test (...) bed for this working hypothesis, since with this kind of implicatures the alternative choices available to the agents are less dependent on context, and they can be derived from the meanings of the sentences employed. Some rival game-theoretic accounts of the same phenomena will be criticised. The present paper shows that scalar implicatures can be explained using iterated admissibility, but that some of these need an additional assumption in order to be accounted for. (shrink)

Sustainable behaviour promotes pro-ecological behaviour and is a practice of consuming and utilizing resources responsibly. The ongoing COVID-19-induced pandemic has already put economic, social and psychological distress across the globe. Meanwhile, it has become vital to think of issues related to the sustainable management of resources. Behavioural norms play a prominent role while promoting sustainable living. This research examines how the sustainable dimension in one’s behaviour influences the decision-making in their daily life. Previous studies have shown the importance of sub-factors (...) like happiness, diversity constraint and frugal actions as factors affecting sustainable behaviour. These indicators mainly define the action one will choose to react to while buying and consuming different resources. The study identifies happiness as the mediating variable which influences the relationship between the predictor variables—mindfulness and diversity acceptance and the criterion variable—frugality-linked sustainable behaviour. With a sample of 324 participants, Baron and Kenny’s mediation model was outlined to test the mediation. Results showed a positive relationship between frugality, diversity, mindfulness and happiness. Happiness was found to be mediating between mindfulness, diversity acceptance and frugality-linked sustainable behaviour indicating that mindfulness and diversity acceptance alone have limited potential to impact the frugality-linked sustainable approach that individuals take. Happiness, as explained through a positive frame of mind, plays a very important role in enhancing sustainability behaviour. (shrink)

Aurama is a system designed to provide peace of mind and a sense of connectedness to adults who care for elderly parents living alone. Aurama monitors the elders at home using unobtrusive sensor technology and collects data about sleeping patterns, weight trends, cognitive abilities and presence at home. The system provides an unobtrusive ambient information display that presents the status of the elder and lets its users inspect long-term data about the well-being of the elder interactively. Aurama was designed iteratively (...) with substantial user involvement through interviews, prototype evaluation, focus groups and lab tests. The final prototype was evaluated in two field trials each involving an elder and their adult children. The input of users throughout the design process and during these tests demonstrates clearly the potential of awareness systems to support the target user group to obtain peace of mind and feel connected. Furthermore, the users indicate a clear need for information on long-term trends relating to the well-being of aging parents, in contrast to the current emphasis in this field of research on providing instantaneous status information about daily activities and context. (shrink)

ExcerptThe debate about persecutory Fascist legislation, in its anti-Jewish and racial-colonial1 articulation, has represented one of the most innovative branches of historical research in Italy in the last twenty years.2 In 1988, the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the promulgation of anti-Jewish legislation marked the symbolic beginning of fruitful studies on the racial character of Fascism. It allowed the integration, development, and refinement of the research carried out for a long time only by Renzo De Felice and Meir Michaelis.3The (...) actual enforcement of persecutory legislation, especially against the Italian Jewish minority, has been an object of detailed study…. (shrink)

Contre la dégradation de l’usage ordinaire du terme tolérance, qui finit par indiquer la cohabitation dans l’indifférence, la pensée de Levinas offre des ressources originales permettant de penser la tolérance au niveau de la relation éthique avec autrui et de lui redonner ainsi une nouvelle vigueur. Un concept peu souligné par Levinas, et néanmoins présent dans son œuvre, celui du supporter, rend en effet possible cette lecture : être un moi implique de supporter la souffrance intolérable à laquelle nous sommes (...) exposés par la proximité d’autrui, et cela n’est possible qu’en se faisant le support d’autrui, c’est-à-dire en donnant un sens éthique à l’absurdité de la souffrance. Cette lecture, qui met l’accent sur la séparation du moi dans la relation à autrui, permet de tirer deux conséquences. La première est qu’elle met en relief une continuité entre la pensée de l’altérité de Levinas et celle de Husserl, telle qu’elle est abordée par la contribution de Pierre-Jean Renaudie dans ce même numéro. La deuxième est qu’elle permet de repenser la tolérance comme concernant d’abord le moi : ce n’est pas autrui que l’on doit tolérer, mais la souffrance intolérable en nous, pour la souffrance d’autrui. (shrink)

Ce travail se propose de mettre en lumière les réflexions de Levinas sur la signification, à partir des notes et des conférences rédigées entre les années 1950 et le début des années 1960. Leur intérêt découle de ce qu’elles se situent à l’arrière-fond de l’élaboration de Totalité et Infini : alors que cet ouvrage est voué à déceler dans la relation éthique la source ultime du sens, ces textes mettent au jour une interrogation profonde et parfois encore hésitante sur la (...) signification, que Levinas explore tantôt dans le cadre de l’intentionnalité, tantôt à travers des figures du langage, notamment le symbole et la métaphore. C’est la possibilité d’y découvrir un surplus de signification, dépassant la simple corrélation intentionnelle, qui mène Levinas à interroger les horizons de la visée intentionnelle et les tropes du langage, en poursuivant ainsi son dialogue avec Husserl, Heidegger et Merleau-Ponty. L’enjeu n’est pas mineur pour Levinas, car il s’agit de comprendre si le surplus de signification ainsi discerné peut ouvrir la voie à une transcendance réelle, à un sens qui affecte et oriente la conscience, ou si ce surplus finit par se rabattre sur l’immanence. (shrink)

Este artículo propone estudiar algunos aspectos de la aparente oposición entre creencia religiosa y racionalidad desde el punto de vista de la reflexión filosófica en torno al lenguaje teológico. En este marco referencial y a partir del debate que, en los años cincuenta, protagonizaron Flew, Hare y Mitchell intentaremos sopesar hasta que punto puede descartarse el carácter racional de la creencia religiosa.This paper intends to study some aspects concerning the manifest opposition between religious belief and rationality, from the philosophical chinking (...) point of view in regards to theological language. Therefore, within the frame of reference led by Flew, Hare and Mitchell during the 1950s, I shall try to consider if the rational expression of the religious belief can be fully disregarded. (shrink)

In the first exposition of the doctrine of indeterminacy of translation, Quine asserted that the individuation and translation of truth-functional sentential connectives like 'and', 'or', 'not' are not indeterminate. He changed his mind later on, conjecturing that some sentential connectives might be interpreted in different non-equivalent ways. This issue has not been debated much by Quine, or in the subsequent literature, it is, as it were, an unsolved problem, not well understood. For the sake of the argument, I will adopt (...) Quine's background assumption that all the semantic features of a language can be reduced to the speakers' dispositions toward assent and dissent, as far as only the truth-conditional core of the meaning of sentences is concerned. I will put forward an argument to the effect that the speech dispositions of most, if not all, English (French, Italian, etc.) speakers constrain a unique translation of their connectives. This argument crucially relies on an empirical conjecture concerning the behaviour of these operators. (shrink)

Uso, significato e riferimento - This article is an exposition of W.V. Quine's doctrine of the indeterminacy of translation of terms. The aim is to provide a clear formulation of this doctrine, to distinguish it from the much stronger claim that the translation of sentences is indeterminate, and to outline the arguments put forward by Quine. The most systematic of these is reconstructed in detail, namely the argument from proxy functions. Finally, it is argued that the ultimate ground of the (...) doctrine is the acceptance of the semantic primacy of sentences. The claim that meaning has to be identified with language use is also discussed. (shrink)

A questão da origem do poder político, na visão do filósofo contratualista inglês Thomas Hobbes, estabelece que o mesmo não está fundado nem vontade divina, nem na natureza, mas criado por um ato deliberado da vontade humana. Sendo criado por meio de um contrato, ou seja, uma transferência do direito natural à liberdade e à igualdade a um representante comum, o Estado, também chamado de Leviatã, é definido pelo autor como um Deus mortal. O objetivo do presente artigo é analisar (...) de que maneira a concepção moderna do Estado, caracterizado a partir do século XVII, está fundada tanto em seu caráter laico, quanto artificial. (shrink)