Concept of manas in Indic philosophy; a study.

Causation is the main foundation upon which the possibility of science rests. Without causation, there would be no scientific understanding, explanation, prediction, nor application in new technologies. How we discover causal connections is no easy matter, however. Causation often lies hiddenfrom view and it is vital that we adopt the right methods for uncovering it. The choice of methods will inevitably reflect what one takes causation to be, making an accurate account of causation an even more pressing matter. This enquiry (...) informs the correct norms for an empirical study of the world. In Causation in Science and the Methods of Scientific Discovery, Rani Lill Anjum and Stephen Mumford propose nine new norms of scientific discovery. A number of existing methodological and philosophical orthodoxies are challenged as they argue that progress in science is being held back by an overlysimplistic philosophy of causation. (shrink)

Research articles on various aspects of Indic philosophy, Tantrism and Hindu culture.

Comparative study of the Jaina and Hindu ethics.

Aphoristic work on the meditational fundamentals of the Yoga school of Indic philosophy.

In this paper a dispositional account of meaning is offered. Words might dispose towards a particular or ‘literal’ meaning, but whether this meaning is actually conveyed when expressed will depend on a number of factors, such as speaker’s intentions, the context of the utterance and the background knowledge of the hearer. It is thus argued that no meaning is guaranteed or necessitated by the words used.

Omissions are sometimes linked to responsibility. A harm can counterfactually depend on an omission to prevent it. If someone had the ability to prevent a harm but didn’t, this could suffice to ground their responsibility for the harm. Michael S. Moore’s claim is illustrated by the tragic case of Peter Parker, shortly after he became Spider-Man. Sick of being pushed around as a weakling kid, Peter became drunk on the power he acquired from the freak bite of a radioactive spider. (...) When a police officer called to Spider-Man to stop an escaping burglar, which he could have done easily, he failed to act. He was through taking orders. The omission was followed by a crime. That very same burglar later robbed Peter’s own house and when challenged he shot dead Peter’s Uncle Ben. Later, Spider-Man tracked down the killer and, when seeing his face close up, the possibility of prevention dawned on him. He could have stopped this crook and had he done so Uncle Ben would still be alive. Stan Lee’s tale of power finished with a Shakespearean twist. Young Peter realised the truth of the WGPCGR-thesis: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. We too will endorse the WGPCGR-thesis. There is a close connection between our notions of moral and legal responsibility and the powers we have as causal agents. This will be particularly important when it comes to the case of omissions: where we had the power to act but failed to do so. We hope to show the connections between the notions of power, cause, act, omission and responsibility but also some of the nuances. We will do so with particular reference to Moore’s account in Causation and Responsibility. (shrink)

We propose a novel interpretation of natural-language questions using a modal predicate logic of knowledge. Our approach brings standard model-theoretic and proof-theoretic techniques from modal logic to bear on questions. Using the former, we show that our interpretation preserves Groenendijk and Stokhof's answerhood relation, yet allows an extensional interpretation. Using the latter, we get a sound and complete proof procedure for the logic for free. Our approach is more expressive; for example, it easily treats complex questions with operators that scope (...) over questions. We suggest a semantic criterion that restricts what natural-language questions can express. We integrate and generalize much previous work on the semantics of questions, including Beck and Sharvit's families of subquestions, non-exhaustive questions, and multi-party conversations. (shrink)

Evidence based medicine (EBM) is under critical debate, and person centered healthcare (PCH) has been proposed as an improvement. But is PCH offered as a supplement or as a replacement of EBM? Prima facie PCH only concerns the practice of medicine, while the contended features of EBM also include methods and medical model. I here argue that there are good philosophical reasons to see PCH as a radical alternative to the existing medical paradigm of EBM, since the two seem committed (...) to conflicting ontologies. This paper aims to make explicit some of the most fundamental assumptions that motivate EBM and PCH, respectively, in order to show that the choice between them ultimately comes down to ontological preference. While EBM has a solid foundation in positivism, or what I here call Humeanism, PCH is more consistent with causal dispositionalism. I conclude that if there is a paradigmatic revolution on the way in medicine, it is first of all one of ontology. (shrink)

It is the primary duty of business to satisfy consumer by providing quality goods and services at right place, right time, in right quantity at a fair price. The need for consumer protection is recognized by law makers in India since ancient times. It was very well realized that a consumer is prone to exploitation on the part of providers of goods and services. Therefore, the ancient Indian law codes regulated not only social conditions but also the economic life of (...) people by establishing human values and code of trade practices to protect the interests of buyers. This article is mainly based on the detailed study of ancient Indian literature, that is, Manu Smriti, Narada Smriti, Brihaspati Smriti and Arthshastra. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In the English language contemporary literature, there are mainly two philosophical approaches to interpretation of the Zhuangzi’s Happy Fish debate. The two approaches to the famous passage are the logical, which focuses on analysis, and the non-analytic, which focuses on context. The approaches are in tension with one another since one implies that the other is wrong. This paper suggests that the view that Zhuangzi holds an externalist view of justification according to the debate (here abbreviated as ZE) reconciles (...) the approaches. ZE is the interpretation that says that in the debate, Zhuangzi is an externalist, in particular, a process reliabilist, because he takes sense perception as means to attaining knowledge. ZE reconciles the two approaches in that in each of them ZE is implicit. Ultimately, this paper not only offers a perspective about the two approaches, it also offers a view about the debate. (shrink)

In this article we examine the association between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm value. This line of research is important since firms continue to invest in CSR even though past studies reveal a limited linkage between financial value and CSR. However, the business case for CSR or “doing good while making a profit,” appears to be advancing within the business ethics literature as a preferred conception of CSR. We conjecture that the greater unification and refinement of both profit maximization (...) and stakeholder interests through corporate acts, not statements alone, will sustain the financial value of CSR in a less regulated global business environment. We study the triangle of what companies say, what companies do, and firm financial performance. We analyze Fortune 250 firms and find a positive association between what companies do based on KLD Research and Analytics, Inc. (KLD) ratings, and what companies state about ethics in their CSR statements. We then employ regression analysis and find that companies’ socially responsible acts are positively associated with overall firm value and financial performance. Yet we do not find a statistically significant association between what companies say regarding ethics in their CSR statements and their financial outcomes. These results suggest that firm value and financial performance is associated with what companies do and not what they say. Our results seem to be driven by multinational corporations (MNCs) and not by non‐MNCs. This is possibly because MNCs generally operate in a less regulated global business environment that often necessitates strong ethical corporate leadership to further stakeholder interests. Overall, these results help reconcile corporate and stakeholder objectives since evidence of a link between financial performance and doing good sustains global CSR. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer two further issues or questions for consideration in thinking about orientation in or stance about technology. We do this in the light of the Zhuangzi’s Primitivist attitude towards technology. The Primitivist is one of the five authorial voices identified in the Zhuangzi. The Zhuangzi is a Chinese philosophical classic named after Zhuang Zhou or Zhuangzi (399?-295? B.C.E.). Fundamentally, we suggest that the Primitivist attitude of resistance towards technology might be said to highlight the point that (...) effects of technology to xing 性 (nature; human nature), thus to individual self, and the natural environment are important considerations in thinking about stance regarding technology. We hold that a reflection on technological orientation would on the whole benefit from a recognition and consideration of two more issues. (shrink)

Causation is everywhere in the world: it features in every science and technology. But how much do we understand it? Mumford and Anjum develop a new theory of causation based on an ontology of real powers or dispositions. They provide the first detailed outline of a thoroughly dispositional approach, and explore its surprising features.

This paper takes behavioural propriety as the source of ritual or the ritualistic in indigenous philosophy in the Philippines. Filipino understanding of behavioural propriety is seen in what have been identified as elements or features of indigenous philosophy in the country. These features are stored in pre-hispanic era (pre-16th century CE) maxims or proverbs and myths. In this paper, I engage conception of behavioural propriety in Filipino philosophy with that in Confucian philosophy. In Confucian philosophy, it is “li” 禮 which (...) relates to ritual. Li encompasses ritual propriety and behavioural propriety. It is originally about ritual or ceremony and, as understood in contemporary scholarship, it has the general meaning of proper conduct; it refers first and foremost to rules of proper conduct. In this paper, I address the question of what each understanding offers for the enrichment of the other. I suggest that importantly, Confucian understanding of li offers the view of behavioural propriety as having an ennobling function, and that Filipino understanding of behavioural propriety offers a perspective on the debate in Confucianism about whether it is ren 仁 or li that is more fundamental in Confucius’s thought. A point that appears to be present in the Filipino understanding is that propriety in behaviour cannot be separated from humaneness (ren). The point comes from the view in the proverbs that a person of ren is necessarily a person of li. Accordingly, the perspective which the Filipino understanding offers proposes the view that behavioural propriety is a necessary condition for humanity (ren). (shrink)

What is the connection between dispositions and ethics? Some might think very little and those who are interested in dispositions tend to be metaphysicians whose interests are far from value. However, we argue in this paper that dispositions and dispositionality are central to ethics, indeed a precondition. Ethics rests on a number of notions that are either dispositional in nature or involve real dispositions or powers at work. We argue for a dispositional account of value that offers an alternative to (...) the traditional fact-value dichotomy. We explain the place of value within a structure that explains the possibility of ethics. Elsewhere in this structure, we argue that moral responsibility is a precondition for ethics and that it is a dispositional notion depending critically on what Mumford and Anjum have called the dispositional modality. Moral responsibility in turn depends on there being both agency and normativity. We argue that intentionality and agency are preconditions for agency and that value is a precondition of normativity. All these notions are dispositional and make best sense if there are real dispositions or causal powers of agents. (shrink)

Mencius portrayed Yang Zhu as an egoist. But the seeming consensus of scholars is that Yang Zhu was not an egoist. Despite that, however, a passage in the Lüshi chunqiu, a third century BCE text, appears to confirm Mencius’s characterization. It says that Yang Zhu valued self. In this paper, I examine the meaning of guiji. Specifically, I investigate on the term ji to reveal the meaning of guiji and elaborate on its possible implications. Ultimately, I show that with Yang (...) Zhu’s possible conception of self, guiji does not necessarily mean egoism. (shrink)

Purpose Digital transformation leverages digital technologies to change current processes and introduce new processes in any organisation’s business model, customer/user experience and operational processes. Artificial intelligence plays a significant role in achieving DT. As DT is touching each sphere of humanity, AI led DT is raising many fundamental questions. These questions raise concerns for the systems deployed, how they should behave, what risks they carry, the monitoring and evaluation control we have in hand, etc. These issues call for the need (...) to integrate ethics in AI led DT. The purpose of this study is to develop an “AI led ethical digital transformation framework”. Design/methodology/approach Based on the literature survey, various existing business ethics decision-making models were synthesised. The authors mapped essential characteristics such as intensity and the individual, organisational and opportunity factors of ethics models with the proposed AI led ethical DT. The DT framework is evaluated using a thematic analysis of 23 expert interviews with relevant AI ethics personas from industry and society. The qualitative data of the interviews and opinion data has been analysed using MAXQDA software. Findings The authors have explored how AI can drive the ethical DT framework and have identified the core constituents of developing an AI led ethical DT framework. Backed by established ethical theories, the paper presents how DT pillars are related and sequenced to ethical factors. This research provides the potential to examine theoretically sequenced ethical factors with practical DT pillars. Originality/value The study establishes deduced and induced ethical value codes based on thematic analysis to develop guidelines for the pursuit of ethical DT. The authors identify four unique induced themes, namely, corporate social responsibility, perceived value, standard benchmarking and learning willingness. The comprehensive findings of this research, supported by a robust theoretical background, have substantial implications for academic research and corporate applicability. The proposed AI led ethical DT framework is unique and can be used for integrated social, technological and economic ethical research. (shrink)

This paper explores an increasingly prevalent element of board-level commitment to sustainability. We propose a theoretical framework under which the existence and associated actions of board-level sustainability committees are motivated by shared value creation, where the interests of a diverse group of stakeholders are satisfied and sufficient profit is achieved. Using hand-collected data, we find that sustainability committees are heterogeneous in focus and vary in their effectiveness. Specifically, we disaggregate the sustainability committee construct based on stakeholder group focus and find (...) that associations between sustainability committees and performance outcomes are stronger when committees focused on a specific stakeholder group are paired with relevant performance outcomes. We generally find that sustainability committees are effective at impacting relevant strengths, but do not mitigate relevant concerns. These results are consistent with the shared value framework, where committees both generate value by pursuing sustainability-related opportunities and protect value by monitoring, but not necessarily mitigating sustainability-related risks. Univariate tests suggest that effective committees are also larger, more independent, and meet more frequently. Finally, we propose a new method to classify industries based on their sensitivity to certain stakeholder groups and find that the effectiveness of committees focused on specific stakeholders is more pronounced in industries that are sensitive to these stakeholders. (shrink)

Our research reveals that organizations are known as great work places due to their successful performance on certain areas. And, financing for such industries is profitable, where employees are happy and shareholders get highest rate of return for their investments. In our study, a few such organizations have been identified and selected for this article. For successful functioning of organizations, certain areas have been recognized as key performance areas. A corporate image can be measured and assessed, based on its creative (...) and innovative approach. We highlighted about ethics, what makes corporate ethics, involvement of corporation in social responsibilities, and how ethical governance needs to be framed. We also covered ideas, contributions, and suggestions made by various experts from different organizations. In the end, we included questions relating to ethics through which we can measure ethical performances. Finally, we concluded that if ethics are followed by every individual India will flourish in global market. (shrink)

The Online Labour Index was launched in 2016 to measure the global utilisation of online freelance work at scale. Five years after its creation, the OLI has become a point of reference for scholars and policy experts investigating the online gig economy. As the market for online freelancing work matures, a high volume of data and new analytical tools allow us to revisit half a decade of online freelance monitoring and extend the index's scope to more dimensions of the global (...) online freelancing market. While measuring the utilisation of online labour across countries and occupations by tracking the number of projects and tasks posted on major English-language platforms, the new Online Labour Index 2020 also tracks Spanish- and Russian-language platforms, reveals changes over time in the geography of labour supply and estimates female participation in the online gig economy. The rising popularity of software and tech work and the concentration of freelancers on the Indian subcontinent are examples of the insights that the OLI 2020 provides. The OLI 2020 delivers a more detailed picture of the world of online freelancing via an interactive online visualisation updated daily. It provides easy access to downloadable open data for policymakers, labour market researchers, and the general public. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that a truth functional account of conditional statements ‘if A then B’ not only is inadequate, but that it eliminates the very conditionality expressed by ‘if’. Focusing only on the truth-values of the statements ‘A’ and ‘B’ and different combinations of these, one is bound to miss out on the conditional relation expressed between them. But this is not a flaw only of truth functionality and the material conditional. All approaches that try to treat conditionals (...) as mere functions of their antecedents and consequents will end up in some sort of logical atomism where causal matters simply are reduced to the joint occurrence of A and B. What we need is a non-extensional approach to conditionals that can account for hypotheticality, potentiality, and dependency, none of which can be understood by looking to the antecedent or consequent per se. (shrink)

Chapter 3 discusses the causes, patterns and dynamics of inequalities in an exhaustive review of the literature on inequality of income, expenditure and wealth among individuals and households. It emphasizes how these inequalities reflect and affect inequality along various dimensions, including political freedom, economic opportunity, health, education and social outcomes. It gives three sets of policy recommendations for different populations: policies to improve the conditions among the poor, the vulnerable and the socially excluded; policies geared towards supporting the growth and (...) sustainability of a strong middle class; and policies that seek to curb concentration of income and wealth at the top. Some of these policy recommendations are quite consistent with what has often been proposed for the past three decades, which is that redistributive policies or welfare at the bottom should benefit the least well-off and address inequality. (shrink)

Study of logic with reference to Tarkabhāṣā of Keśavamiśra, 13th cent.

Contributed articles presented at National Seminar on "Jain and Buddhist Traditions in Sanskrit" organised by Department of Sanskrit, University of Patna, Patna on 16-17 April 2000.

Study of the Buddhist philosophy as presented in Kumārila Bhaṭṭa's Ślokavārttika, 7th century exegesis of Śabarasvāmī's Mīmāṃsābhāṣya, commentary on Jaimini's Mīmāṃsāsūtra.

The material interpretation of conditionals is commonly recognized as involving some paradoxical results. I here argue that the truth functional approach to natural language is the reason for the inadequacy of this material interpretation, since the truth or falsity of some pair of statements ‘p’ and ‘q’ cannot per se be decisive for the truth or falsity of a conditional relation ‘if p then q’. This inadequacy also affects the ability of the overall formal system to establish whether or not (...) arguments involving conditionals are valid. I also demonstrate that the Paradox of Indicative Conditionals does not actually involve a paradox, but instead contains some paralogistic elements that make it appear to be a paradox. The discussion of the paradox in this paper further reveals that the material interpretation of conditionals adversely affects the treatment of disjunctions. -/- Much has been said about these matters in the literature that point in the same direction. However, there seems to be some reluctance against fully complying with the arguments against the truth functional account of conditionals, since many of the alternative accounts rely on the material conditional, or at least on an understanding of the conditional as a function of antecedent and consequent in a similar sense as the material conditional. My argument against truth functionality indicates that it may in general involve similar problems to treat conditionals as such functions, whether one deals with theories of truth, assertability or probability. (shrink)