Not another translation but a highly readable and in-depth exploration of select passages from this essential classical text as a key to the complete path of yoga "The fruit of a lifetime of inquiry and practice, this is a book that the world needs." --Mark Singleton, author of Yoga Body and Roots of Yoga "Unassuming, generous and brilliant, Dave and Ranju teach from the heart with wit and wisdom." --Tara Fraser, Director Yoga Junction, author Yoga for You and Yoga (...) Bliss Understanding Patanjali's Yoga Sutras is the key to understanding yoga itself, and yet relatively few of today's practitioners know how to apply these ancient Sanskrit aphorisms to contemporary life. Ranju Roy and David Charlton focus on 18 of the most important sutras and show how each one illuminates the relationship between the body, the breath, and the mind. The authors examine the interplay of three key terms: support, direction, and space. They suggest that only by taking "support" can you establish a clear direction; and once a direction is established then space can open up. This formula can be applied as successfully to the body (in asana) as to the breath (in pranayama) and the mind (through meditation). Embodying the Yoga Sutras is a practical and a deeply philosophical book. (shrink)

Roy Sorenson offers a unique exploration of an ancient problem: vagueness. Did Buddha become a fat man in one second? Is there a tallest short giraffe? According to Sorenson's epistemicist approach, the answers are yes! Although vagueness abounds in the way the world is divided, Sorenson argues that the divisions are sharp; yet we often do not know where they are. Written in Sorenson'e usual inventive and amusing style, this book offers original insight on language and logic, the way world (...) is, and our understanding of it. (shrink)

This text maps the network of concepts that constitute the general catagory of reason. In the process it shows that some famous philosophical doctrines are based on mistaken assumptions in this conceptual area. In particular, it aims to undermine the arguments of Hume and is modern followers to the effect that reason can be theoretical but not practical (can govern thought but not action) and that value judgements cannot be validly inferred from facts.

Can God create a stone too heavy for him to lift? Can time have a beginning? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Riddles, paradoxes, conundrums--for millennia the human mind has found such knotty logical problems both perplexing and irresistible. Now Roy Sorensen offers the first narrative history of paradoxes, a fascinating and eye-opening account that extends from the ancient Greeks, through the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, and into the twentieth century. When Augustine asked what God was doing before (...) He made the world, he was told: "Preparing hell for people who ask questions like that." A Brief History of the Paradox takes a close look at "questions like that" and the philosophers who have asked them, beginning with the folk riddles that inspired Anaximander to erect the first metaphysical system and ending with such thinkers as Lewis Carroll, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and W.V. Quine. Organized chronologically, the book is divided into twenty-four chapters, each of which pairs a philosopher with a major paradox, allowing for extended consideration and putting a human face on the strategies that have been taken toward these puzzles. Readers get to follow the minds of Zeno, Socrates, Aquinas, Ockham, Pascal, Kant, Hegel, and many other major philosophers deep inside the tangles of paradox, looking for, and sometimes finding, a way out. Filled with illuminating anecdotes and vividly written, A Brief History of the Paradox will appeal to anyone who finds trying to answer unanswerable questions a paradoxically pleasant endeavor. (shrink)

Some actions are freer than others, and the difference is palpably important in terms of inner process, subjective perception, and social consequences. Psychology can study the difference between freer and less free actions without making dubious metaphysical commitments. Human evolution seems to have created a relatively new, more complex form of action control that corresponds to popular notions of free will. It is marked by self-control and rational choice, both of which are highly adaptive, especially for functioning within culture. The (...) processes that create these forms of free will may be biologically costly and therefore are only used occasionally, so that people are likely to remain only incompletely self-disciplined, virtuous, and rational. (shrink)

Charitable interpreters of David Hume set aside his sprinkles of piety. Better to read him as lying than as clumsily inconsistent. We argue that the attribution of lies can pay dividends in historical scholarship no matter how strongly the theorist condemns lying. Accordingly, we show that our approach works even with one of the strongest condemners of lying: Immanuel Kant. We argue that Kant lied in his scholarly work and even in the first Critique. And we defend the claim that (...) this lie attribution, strange as it may sound, amounts to a kind of scholarly charity. (shrink)

In this paper, Roy attempts to develop a semiprescriptive analysis for the natural sciences by examining more closely a skill that many feminist scientists have been reported to possess. Feminist scientists have often been lauded for their ability to “ask different questions.” Drawing from standpoint theory, strong objectivity, situated knowledges, agential realism, and the methodology of the oppressed, the author suggests that this skill can be articulated further into the feminist practice of research agenda choice. Roy illustrates the usefulness of (...) developing such a practice by addressing her own dilemma of conducting in vitro research in a reproductive biology lab. (shrink)

Can the early Yogācāra be said to present a systematic theory of meaning? The paper argues that Sthiramati’s bhāṣya on Vasubandhu’s Triṃśikā, in which he argues that all language-use is metaphorical, indeed amounts to such a theory, both because of the text’s engagement with the wider Indian philosophical conversation about reference and meaning and by virtue of the questions it addresses and its motivations. Through a translation and analysis of key sections of Sthiramati’s commentary I present the main features of (...) this theory of meaning and discuss the ways in which it is distinct from Vasubandhu’s ideas. I demonstrate how this theory of meaning enabled Sthiramati to present a unique understanding of discourse that distinguishes between varying levels of truth within the conventional realm. This understanding sat well with the Yogācāra soteriological and theoretical needs, and most importantly, enabled him to establish the meaningfulness of the school’s own metaphysical discourse. Securing this meaningfulness was especially important to Sthiramati in meeting the challenge posed by the radical conventionalism of the Madhyamaka, and his response as I interpret it suggests that one of the main disputes between the early Yogācāra with the Mādhyamika, at least as reflected in the Triṃśikā-bhāṣya, in fact turns on linguistic rather than ontological issues. (shrink)

Research has shown that context influences how sincere a smile appears to observers. That said, most studies on this topic have focused exclusively on situational cues (e.g. smiling while at a party versus smiling during a job interview) and few have examined other elements of context. One important element concerns any knowledge an observer might have about the smiler as an individual (e.g. their habitual behaviours, traits or attitudes). In this manuscript, we present three experiments that explored the influence of (...) such knowledge on ratings of smile sincerity. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants rated the sincerity of Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles after having been exposed to cues about the smiler’s tendency to reciprocate (this person always, never or occasionally returns favours). In Experiment 3 they performed the same task but with cues about the smiler’s love of learning (this person always, never or occasionally enjoys learning new tasks). The results show that cues about the smiler’s reciprocity tendency influenced participants’ ratings of smile sincerity and did so in a stronger manner than cues about the smiler’s love of learning. Overall, these results both strengthen and broaden the literature on the role of context on judgements of smile sincerity. (shrink)

This essay aims to explore the meaning of freedom from a comparative perspective, focusing on critical comparisons between the discourses of liberalism and Neo-Confucianism. In so doing, my specific purpose is to characterize one of the possible, and perhaps the most plausible, presentations of Confucian liberalism as a perfectionist form of Hegelian liberalism. The contents are organized into three major sections.To begin with, thanks largely to Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts of Liberty” and Chang Fo-ch’üan’s Tzu-yu yü jen-ch’üan, an asymmetry emerged (...) in conceptualizing negative and positive freedom in the Chinese context; this development suggests that whereas negative.. (shrink)

Outlining both historical foundations and the latest research trends, this Research Handbook offers a unique and cutting-edge overview of the numerous avenues to responsible management.Opening with a conceptual mapping of the field, thought leaders such as Henry Mintzberg and Archie Carroll present foundational and controversial views. Frameworks such as sustainability management, responsible leadership, humanistic and biomimetic management are introduced. Glocal approaches include responsible management with Chinese characteristics, West African Yoruba, and American Pragmatism. Exploring frameworks for the responsible management process, such (...) as theories of practice, and for responsible management learning and innovation, readers are introduced to key methods responsible management research, such as participatory action research. Groundbreaking in scope and depth, this Handbook caters to the responsible management research community, particularly to the Academy of Management and to United Nations PRME signatory business schools. Policymakers and practitioners will benefit from its insight into the latest advances in responsible management research. (shrink)

This chapter summarizes research on free will. Progress has been made by discarding outmoded philosophical notions in favor of exploring how ordinary people understand and use the notion of free will. The concept of responsible autonomy captures many aspects of layperson concepts of free will, including acting on one's own (i.e., not driven by external forces), choosing, using reasons and personal values, conscious reflection, and knowing and accepting consequences and moral implications. Free will can thus be understood as form of (...) volition (action control) that evolved to enable people to live in cultural societies. Much work has shown that belief in free will (as opposed to disbelief) is associated with actions that are conducive to functioning well in culture, including helpfulness, restraint of aggression, learning via counterfactual analysis, thinking for oneself, effective job performance, and appropriate gratitude. Belief in free will increases in response to misdeeds by others, thus emphasizing the link to personal responsibility. Research on volition indicates that self-regulation, intelligent reasoning, decision making, and initiative all deplete a (common) limited energy source, akin to the folk notion of willpower and linked to the body's glucose supplies. Free will is thus not an absolute or constant property of persons but a variable, fluctuating capability—one that is nonetheless highly adaptive for individuals and society. -/- The notion that people have free will has been invoked in multiple contexts. Legally and morally, it explains why people can be held responsible for their actions. Theologically, it was used to explain why a supposedly kind and omniscient god would send most of the people he created to hell (Walker, 1964). Yet, for such an important concept, there remains wide-ranging disagreement and confusion over its existence and its nature. For example, philosophers still debate whether humans truly have free will and, if so, under what conditions human volition deserves to be considered free (Kane, 2011). In psychology, most theorists believe that humans engage in self-control, rational choice, planning, initiative, and related acts of volition. The debate is not whether these things occur but merely whether these should be called free will. -/- This chapter will provide an overview of recent psychology experiments concerned with free will. There are three main and quite distinct sets of problems, each with associated lines of research. The first is concerned with how people understand the idea of free will. The second concerns the causes and consequences of believing in free will. The third focuses on the actual volitional processes that guide human action. (shrink)

Some people believe more than others in free will, and researchers have both measured and manipulated those beliefs. Disbelief in free will has been shown to cause dishonest, selfish, aggressive, and conforming behavior, and to reduce helpfulness, learning from one’s misdeeds, thinking for oneself, recycling, expectations for occupational success, and actual quality of performance on the job. Belief in free will has been shown to have only modest or negligible correlations with other variables, indicating that it is a distinct trait. (...) Belief in free will has correlated positively with life satisfaction and finding life meaningful, with self‐efficacy and self‐control, with low levels of stress, and (though not entirely consistently) with internal locus of control. High belief in free will has been linked to a punitive attitude toward wrongdoers and lower forgiveness toward them. The belief seems to involve a sense of agency and expecting others to behave in morally responsible fashion. (shrink)

Competitive negotiators frequently use tactics which others view as "unethical", in that these tactics either violate standards of truth telling or violate the perceived rules of negotiation. This paper sought to determine how business students viewed a number of marginally ethical negotiating tactics, and to determine the underlying factor structure of these tactics. The factor analysis of these tactics revealed five clear factors which were highly similar across the two samples, and which parallel (to a moderate degree) categories of tactics (...) proposed by earlier theory. Data from one sample also permitted comparisons of the appropriateness of certain tactics across gender, nationality, ethnic origin and perception of one's negotiating style. (shrink)

In this paper, the sine, cosine and cotangent similarity measures of interval rough neutrosophic sets is proposed. Some properties of the proposed measures are discussed. We have proposed multi attribute decision making approaches based on proposed similarity measures. To demonstrate the applicability, a numerical example is solved.

This Handbook presents what world and regional religions teach about economic morality. It also compares the major religions, especially the Abrahamic faiths, in their positions on various social, business, and policy themes, such as feminism, competition, and the ecology, among others. The concluding chapter is an analytical synthesis that presents and explains the patterns that emerge from the various religions in this Handbook. Readers will find a remarkable convergence in religions’ teachings on economic morality, despite their wide differences in dogma, (...) ecclesial structures, and social practices. This confluence can be traced to similarities in the underlying anthropologies and cosmologies of these faiths. Readers will also discover that these religions’ economic teachings are the antithesis of contemporary market ethos, policy, and praxis. This Handbook underscores a symbiosis between religion and economic life as they mutually enrich each other. On the one hand, religion improves the efficiency and efficacy of economic life by lowering the frictional and monitoring costs of market operations. Virtuous market participants internalize norms of good economic conduct and behave accordingly. On the other hand, socio-economic life offers manifold enticements, comforts, and overindulgences that paradoxically push devout adherents to invest themselves even further in their beliefs. Socio-economic life provides an opportunity for religions to build strong faith communities and for believers to reify their religion in their economic conduct. This Handbook presents the richness, nuances, and rationale of religions and their economic ethics based on their vision of a natural and divine order. It shows that they share far more in common than whatever divides them, at least when it comes to economic morality. (shrink)

Understanding the individual-level factors associated with sustainable behaviour in the workplace is important to advance corporate ethics and sustainability efforts. In two studies, we simultaneously assess the role of core values and personality traits in relation to a broad set of sustainability actions, both beneficial and harmful. Results from a student sample and then a national sample confirm that values and personality are distinct constructs that incrementally and differentially predict economic, social, and environmental outcomes. We successfully replicate previous findings pertaining (...) to values and find that, controlling for values, the personality dimension of Honesty–Humility is the strongest negative predictor of harmful actions. Our analyses highlight the unique characteristics of values and personality and their distinct implications for ethical and sustainable management practice. By assessing values and personality together, we also contribute to more general efforts within psychology to develop an integrative view of the person. (shrink)

Self-protection can have psychological and behavioral implications. We contrast them with the implications of a self-enhancement strategy. Both self-enhancement and self-protection have costs and benefits as survival strategies, and we identify some of the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral tradeoffs associated with the differential preferences for each strategy. New analyses on a large existing data set confirm the target article's hypothesis that women are more attuned than men to potential negative consequences of innovations.

_The Art of Comics_ is the first-ever collection of essays published in English devoted to the philosophical topics raised by comics and graphic novels. In an area of growing philosophical interest, this volume constitutes a great leap forward in the development of this fast expanding field, and makes a powerful contribution to the philosophy of art. The first-ever anthology to address the philosophical issues raised by the art of comics Provides an extensive and thorough introduction to the field, and to (...) comics more generally Responds to the increasing philosophical interest in comic art Includes a preface by the renowned comics author Warren Ellis Many of the chapters are illustrated, and the book carries a stunning cover by the rising young comics star David Heatley. (shrink)

Saul Kripke’s theory of truth suffers from expressive limitations – in particular, there are no extensional operators within that framework that allow one to characterize those sentences that fail to receive a truth value within the framework. Especially worrisome is the fact that there is no operator that outputs true on exactly the paradoxical sentences. In this paper I extend Kripke’s approach via the addition of extensional operators, which allows us to characterize many (but not all) such sentences, including the (...) paradoxical ones. (shrink)

Owing to its benefits on various cognitive aspects, one’s emotions and wellbeing, meditation has drawn interest from several researchers and common public alike. We have different meditation practices associated with many cultures and traditions across the globe. Current literature suggests significant changes in the neural activity among the different practices of meditation, as each of these practices contributes to distinct physiological and psychological effects. Although this is the case, we want to find out if there is an underlying commonality among (...) all these different practices. So, we ask the following questions related to different practices of meditation, the traditional goal of meditation and its significance - What is the central purpose of meditation? Do traditions define the final goal of all the practices of meditation? Are the purpose and goal of these practices different or is there a common goal to be attained through all these distinct practices? Embracing the traditional perspective, through this paper, we want to emphasize, although these techniques and practices may appear different on the periphery, eventually, they seem to subject one to the same experience at the end; a natural meditative state (discussed in various spiritual traditions as the goal of meditation). In view of future studies on different meditation practices and also those exploring this subjective state, we offer some interesting ideas based on the traditional insights on meditation. In this context, we would also like to make a few comments on the way contemporary researchers view different practices of meditation. (shrink)

The emerging discipline of complexity science, applied to the social sciences, seeks to study the rise of human civilization as a part of a natural, evolving biological system that exploits energy resources to fuel its growth into a complex social system. In order to understand the whole system, the reductionist approach, typical to Western science, must be supplanted. The atomistic study of various scientific fields as separate mechanical parts of the system must be broadened, creating a more holistic view of (...) human culture as an integral part of larger universal process of evolution and creation. In this article I wish to integrate the various scientific fields, including physics, chronobiology, biology, evolutionary psychology, and the social sciences, to achieve a unified understanding of our cultural evolution. (shrink)

This volume is a collation of original contributions from the key actors of a new trend in the contemporary theory of knowledge and belief, that we call “dynamic epistemology”. It brings the works of these researchers under a single umbrella by highlighting the coherence of their current themes, and by establishing connections between topics that, up until now, have been investigated independently. It also illustrates how the new analytical toolbox unveils questions about the theory of knowledge, belief, preference, action, and (...) rationality, in a number of central axes in dynamic epistemology: temporal, social, probabilistic and even deontic dynamics. (shrink)

In the twentieth century, philosophers tackled many of the philosophical problems of previous generations by dissolving them--attacking them as linguistic illusions and showing that the problems, when closely inspected, were not problems at all. Roy A. Sorensen takes the most important and interesting examples from one hundred years of analytic philosophy to consolidate a different theory of dissolution. Pseudo-Problems offers a fascinating alternative history of twentieth century analytic philosophy. It seeks to outline a unified account of dissolution that can consolidate (...) the piecemeal insights of analytic philosophers. An accessible account of questionable questions, the book represents an important contribution to the debates about creativity and problem solving. (shrink)