The COVID-19 pandemic will likely recede only through development and distribution of an effective vaccine. Although there are many unknowns surrounding COVID-19 vaccine development, vaccine demand will likely outstrip early supply, making prospective planning for vaccine allocation critical for ensuring the ethical distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. Here, we propose three central goals for COVID-19 vaccination campaigns: to reduce morbidity and mortality, to minimise additional economic and societal burdens related to the pandemic and to narrow unjust health inequalities. We evaluate five (...) prioritisation approaches, assess their likely impact on advancing the three goals of vaccine allocation and identify open scientific questions that may alter their outcomes. We argue that no single prioritisation approach will advance all three goals. Instead, we propose a multipronged approach that considers the risk of serious COVID-19 illness, instrumental value and the risk of transmission, and is guided by future research on COVID-19-specific clinical and vaccine characteristics. While we focus this assessment on the USA, our analysis can inform allocation in other contexts. (shrink)

Proof, Computation and Agency: Logic at the Crossroads provides an overview of modern logic and its relationship with other disciplines. As a highlight, several articles pursue an inspiring paradigm called 'social software', which studies patterns of social interaction using techniques from logic and computer science. The book also demonstrates how logic can join forces with game theory and social choice theory. A second main line is the logic-language-cognition connection, where the articles collected here bring several fresh perspectives. Finally, the book (...) takes up Indian logic and its connections with epistemology and the philosophy of science, showing how these topics run naturally into each other. (shrink)

Games, Norms, and Reasons: Logic at the Crossroads provides an overview of modern logic focusing on its relationships with other disciplines, including new interfaces with rational choice theory, epistemology, game theory and informatics. This book continues a series called "Logic at the Crossroads" whose title reflects a view that the deep insights from the classical phase of mathematical logic can form a harmonious mixture with a new, more ambitious research agenda of understanding and enhancing human reasoning and intelligent interaction. The (...) editors have gathered together articles from active authors in this new area that explore dynamic logical aspects of norms, reasons, preferences and beliefs in human agency, human interaction and groups. The book pays a special tribute to Professor Rohit Parikh, a pioneer in this movement. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article, I propose to take up the concept and physical space of a photographic 'darkroom' located in Stone Town, Zanzibar, to explore a set of images from the Capital Art Studio collection produced by Ranchhod Oza, and inherited by his son Rohit Oza. I employ a concept of darkness to read this visual archive differently and propose multiple 'other lives' for a set of images. First, by bringing this African photography collection to light, I am taking (...) it out of the 'dark rooms' of history in one sense and exposing it for interpretation. Second, I focus my lens on the Oza physical darkroom located in the back of the studio on Kenyatta Road in Stone Town, where photographs of a range of Zanzibari persons were both developed and printed and that open up the darkroom as a place of photographic complexity and sensorium, and not just mechanical reproduction. Third, I develop darkness as a form of beauty in certain images of sky, water and skin from this archive that showcase Zanzibar's position as an Indian Ocean island and port city whilst under rule by the Omani Sultanate and British Protectorate. Fourth, I conceptualise the Zanzibar Revolution of 1964 as a time of visual darkness, which temporarily restricted photographic practices operating in Stone Town under the new Afro-Shirazi political party. Throughout my analysis, I use a framing of 'darkness' to interrogate photography as an aesthetic practice deeply immersed in materialities and metaphors of dark and light, black and white, and as integral to Zanzibar's oceanic islandness. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉRécemment, Anil Gupta a soulevé plusieurs objections importantes à l’encontre de la théorie de la perception de Wilfrid Sellars. Cet article se donne pour objectif de défendre la théorie de Sellars contre ces objections. J’admets que certains aspects de sa théorie posent problème. Il y a, par exemple, de bonnes raisons de rejeter la thèse de Sellars selon laquelle le référent ultime d’une saisie perceptive est une impression sensible. Néanmoins, je soutiens qu’une explication sellarsienne de la perception reste une (...) approche viable de la perception, en dépit des puissantes objections de Gupta. (shrink)

After summarizing the essential details of Anil Gupta’s account of perceptual justification in his book _Empiricism and Experience_, I argue for three claims: (1) Gupta’s proposal is closer to rationalism than advertised; (2) there is a major lacuna in Gupta’s account of how convergence in light of experience yields absolute entitlements to form beliefs; and (3) Gupta has not adequately explained how ordinary courses of experience can lead to convergence on a commonsense view of the world.

Gupta’s Rule of Revision theory of truth builds on insights to be found in Martin and Woodruff and Kripke in order to permanently deepen our understanding of truth, of paradox, and of how we work our language while our language is working us. His concept of a predicate deriving its meaning by way of a Rule of Revision ought to impact significantly on the philosophy of language. Still, fortunately, he has left me something to.

The aim of this meta-analysis was to evaluate the effects of complex training on sprint, jump, and change of direction ability among soccer players. After an electronic search, 10 peer-reviewed articles were considered in the meta-analysis. The athletes included in this meta-analysis were amateur to professional level male soccer players. These studies incorporated CT in soccer players who were compared to a control group. Significant moderate to large improvements were observed in the CT group [sprint: standard mean difference = 0.92–1.91; (...) jump: SMD = 0.96–1.58; COD: SMD = 0.97–1.49] when compared to control groups. Subgroup analysis were also conducted based on age, duration, and competitive level. The beneficial effects of CT were greater in players <18 vs. ≥18 years, after ≥8 vs. <8 weeks and among professional vs. amateur players. In conclusion, regular soccer training programs may be supplemented with CT to improve sprint, jump, and COD performance. A longer duration of CT seems to be optimal in improving the physical abilities of soccer players. Professional players and <18 years players may benefit more from CT program. (shrink)

We consider various concepts associated with the revision theory of truth of Gupta and Belnap. We categorize the notions definable using their theory of circular definitions as those notions universally definable over the next stable set. We give a simplified account of varied revision sequences-as a generalised algorithmic theory of truth. This enables something of a unification with the Kripkean theory of truth using supervaluation schemes.

This book discusses major milestones in Rohit Jivanlal Parikh’s scholarly work. Highlighting the transition in Parikh’s interest from formal languages to natural languages, and how he approached Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language, it traces the academic trajectory of a brilliant scholar whose work opened up various new avenues in research. This volume is part of Springer’s book series Outstanding Contributions to Logic, and honours Rohit Parikh and his works in many ways. Parikh is a leader in the realm of (...) ideas, offering concepts and definitions that enrich the field and lead to new research directions. Parikh has contributed to a variety of areas in logic, computer science and game theory. In mathematical logic his contributions have been in recursive function theory, proof theory and non-standard analysis; in computer science, in the areas of modal, temporal and dynamic logics of programs and semantics of programs, as well as logics of knowledge; in artificial intelligence in the area of belief revision; and in game theory in the formal analysis of social procedures, with a strong undercurrent of philosophy running through all his work.This is not a collection of articles limited to one theme, or even directly connected to specific works by Parikh, but instead all papers are inspired and influenced by Parikh in some way, adding structures to and enriching “Parikh-land”. The book presents a brochure-like overview of Parikh-land before providing an “introductory video” on the sights and sounds that you experience when reading the book. (shrink)

This paper contributes to business ethics by focusing on consumption that is characterized by normative violence. By drawing on the work of Judith Butler this study of kajer lok—a female subaltern group of Indian domestic service providers—and their higher status clients shows how codes of status-based consumption shaped by markets, class, caste, and patriarchy create a social order that reduces kajer lok to “ungreivable” lives. Our study contributes to business ethics by focusing on exploitation and coercion in consumption rather than (...) in production and of woman rather than of men. It adds to consumer research by revealing how social distinctions not only manifest in status contests in which symbolic power is at stake but also may produce violent exploitation and ungrievable lives. (shrink)

The integration of Corporate social responsibility with BusinessStrategy has been identified as a central Corporate social responsibility concept. Corporate social responsibility, it is important to understand the Key Drivers and Building Blocks that is integral to this phenomenon and which will impact the Civil Society at large. If the Indian government and private companies are serious about meeting Sustainable Development Goals, Mandated CSR has to be used as a Strategic Vehicle not only to reduce the substantial financial shortfall but Corporate (...) social responsibility as an integral part of a company’s Strategy, to help companies achieve Competitive Advantage. The paper lists down five strategic Building Blocks of Mandated CSR namely—Shared vision, Key Drivers, Dialogue, measuring impact, and Governance which provide a mental framework to think about mCSR in a novel way. The paper emphasizes the importance of Shared vision, Problem Identification, utilizing Board’s Expertise, Innovation, building network, Best Practice sharing, managing failure risk, Shareholder’s Activism, Government’s Intention, and Capacity Building. (shrink)

Gupta's book [9] contains a theory of modal logic that is closely related to my modal language ML v [2], and his theory is used to treat some interesting philosophical problems. Hence, it is natural for me to review this valuable book and to concentrate on its logics, the more so as its use has already been spoken of and appreciated by Kapitan [10], although I cannot but share his appreciation.

Gupta effectively probes the methodological and ethical presuppostions of Evidence Based Medicine, and its more contestable application to psychiatry. She concludes with an endorsement of a very modest reformulation of it as one guide to practice among many.

The paper examines the ethical conception of the most well-known and much discussed Hindu text, the "Bhagavad Gītā", in the context of the Western distinction between duty ethics and virtue ethics. Most of the materials published on the "Gītā" make much of its conception of duty; however, there is no systematic investigation of the notion of virtue in the "Gītā". The paper begins with a discussion of the fundamental characteristics of virtue ethics, before undertaking a discussion of the conceptions of (...) duty and virtue in the "Gītā". The paper clearly demonstrates that both duty and virtue coexist in the "Gītā", and the "Gītā" accords virtue an important place. (shrink)

Deontic Logic goes back to Ernst Mally’s 1926 work, Grundgesetze des Sollens: Elemente der Logik des Willens [Mally. E.: 1926, Grundgesetze des Sollens: Elemente der Logik des Willens, Leuschner & Lubensky, Graz], where he presented axioms for the notion ‘p ought to be the case’. Some difficulties were found in Mally’s axioms, and the field has much developed. Logic of Knowledge goes back to Hintikka’s work Knowledge and Belief [Hintikka, J.: 1962, Knowledge and Belief: An Introduction to the Logic of (...) the Two Notions, Cornell University Press] in which he proposed formal logics of knowledge and belief. This field has also developed quite a great deal and is now the subject of the TARK conferences. However, there has been relatively little work combining the two notions of knowledge (belief) with the notion of obligation. (See, however, [Lomuscio, A. and Sergot, M.: 2003, Studia Logica 75 63–92; Moore, R. C.: 1990, In J. F. Allen, J. Hendler and A. Tate (eds.), Readings in Planning, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Mateo, CA]) In this paper we point out that an agent’s obligations are often dependent on what the agent knows, and indeed one cannot reasonably be expected to respond to a problem if one is not aware of its existence. For instance, a doctor cannot be expected to treat a patient unless she is aware of the fact that he is sick, and this creates a secondary obligation on the patient or someone else to inform the doctor of his situation. In other words, many obligations are situation dependent, and only apply in the presence of the relevant information. Thus a case for combining Deontic Logic with the Logic of Knowledge is clear. We introduce the notion of knowledge based obligation and offer an S5, history based Kripke semantics to express this notion, as this semantics enables us to represent how information is transmitted among agents and how knowledge changes over time as a result of communications. We consider both the case of an absolute obligation (although dependent on information) as well as the (defeasible) notion of an obligation which may be over-ridden by more relevant information. For instance a physician who is about to inject a patient with drug d may find out that the patient is allergic to d and that she should use d′ instead. Dealing with the second kind of case requires a resort to non-monotonic reasoning and the notion of justified belief which is stronger than plain belief, but weaker than absolute knowledge in that it can be over-ridden. This notion of justified belief also creates a derived notion of default obligation where an agent has, as far as the agent knows, an obligation to do some action a. A dramatic application of this notion is our analysis of the Kitty Genovese case where, in 1964, a young woman was stabbed to death while 38 neighbours watched from their windows but did nothing. The reason was not indifference, but none of the neighbours had even a default obligation to act, even though, as a group, they did have an obligation to take some action to protect Kitty. (shrink)

From Kabir to Krishnamurti is a far cry. For, they are separated one from the other by over five centuries. But quantitative measurement of this distance has a qualitative aspect which cannot be measured in any time-scale. Two great seers lived in two completely different worlds-with no comparison between the two. And yet they expressed their thoughts and experience not only in a similar language but almost in identical terms. In these two streams of thought represented by Kabir and Krishnaji, (...) the authors note a fascinating parallelism. These streams run parallel to each other-and yet they meet from time to time-at the intersections between the two approaches to life. J. Krishnamurti and Sant Kabir focuses on these meeting points between the two approaches to life. The book also presents the intersections between the writings and sayings of Kabir and Krishnaji. (shrink)

BackgroundExercise is primarily sustained by energy derived from lipids, and glucose. Substrate utilization is the pattern by which these fuel sources are used during activity. There are many factors that influence substrate utilization. We aim to delineate the effect of exercise intensity and body composition on substrate utilization.ObjectiveThe objective of our study was to discern the differences in substrate utilization profiles during a maximal and submaximal graded exercise test, and to determine the extent to which body composition influences substrate utilization (...) during the exercise tests.MethodsA total of 27 male athletes, 32.5 ± 11 years of age, were recruited for this study. Body composition was analyzed using a bioelectrical impedance analyzer. Maximal and submaximal exercise tests were performed on a treadmill. A novel graded submaximal treadmill protocol was used for the submaximal test.ResultsAverage percent body fat was 15.8 ± 5%. Average maximal oxygen consumption was 47.6 ± 9 mL/kg/min, while the average exercise intensity at which participants were shifting to glucose predominance for energy during the maximal and submaximal tests were 76 ± 8.3% and 58.4 ± 21.1%, respectively. A paired-samples t-test was conducted to compare percent VO2max at crossover point in maximal and submaximal graded exercise tests. There was a significant difference in percent VO2max at the crossover point for maximal and submaximal tests. A linear regression was performed to elucidate the interaction between exercise intensity at the crossover point and body composition during a maximal and submaximal graded exercise test. There was a significant effect of PBF on percent VO2max at crossover point during the maximal graded exercise test [F = 9.10, P = 0.006] with an R2 of 0.245. However, there was no significant effect of PBF on percent VO2max at crossover point during the submaximal graded exercise test.ConclusionSubstrate utilization, represented by the crossover point, is dependent on the rate of increase in exercise intensity. At maximal efforts, the crossover to carbohydrates from fats as the predominant fuel source occurs at a significantly later stage of percent VO2max than at submaximal efforts. Furthermore, body composition represented by PBF is a significant predictor of substrate utilization during maximal efforts. Athletes with a relatively higher PBF are more likely to have increased lipid oxidation during high intensity exercises than those with a lower body fat percentage. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 1, Page 236-242, January 2022.

This article looks at the contribution made by Ambalavaner Sivanandan to black politics and organising in Britain. It reviews some of his most important writings and analyses their significance and influence on black activism and race studies. Specifically, the article looks at the ways in which class and race intersected in his work and his critical stance towards political elites and advocacy for radical politics.

Some criticisms are offered of Barwise and Etchemendy's theory of truth, the principal one being that it violates a feature of truth called “supervenience”.

The paper, in Part 1, is devoted to discussing the underlying logic and algebra of the classical mechanics and quantum mechanics, their syntax and semantics, the reasons for their differences and the diagrammatic representations of the two. This part of the paper also demonstrates that there are several puzzling characters of microphysical phenomena by alluding to the relevant details of the double-slit experiment. These counterintuitive results of the experiment make it difficult to explain the empirical success and realist commitments of (...) quantum mechanics. The second part, Part 2, of the paper is concerned with the question as to how conceptual schemes of scientists interact with the world such that the problem of new meaning and reference of the microphysical terms could be determined. The paper refrains from having a general discussion on Realism and do not venture into a comprehensive survey and critique of all known varieties of realistic interpretations. It selects only a few forms of realism (based on the reasons given) in investigating microphysical phenomena forming part of QM. These selected forms of realism explain how does conceptual scheme/terms in scientific theory hookup to the objects and their relations in the world based on the model-theoretic character of the scientific theory and causal rigidified descriptivism of scientific terms (vide Putnam) as well as scientist’s interaction with the world, say, in the “instrumental context of laboratory” (vide Heelan) such that the problem of meaning and reference could be resolved. The paper claims that convergence of the two views may result in a particular form of realism, the Hermeneuticized Internal Realism, appropriate for the science of microphysical phenomena. (shrink)

This article was written shortly after the death of Benedict Anderson. It contextualizes Anderson's contribution to studies of nationalism and the Global South, particularly Asia. It then revisits some of the key debates of Anderson’s scholarship and its particular significance and importance to the study of South Asia.

We investigate the semantics of messages, and argue that the meaning ofa message is naturally and usefully given in terms of how it affects theknowledge of the agents involved in the communication. We note thatthis semantics depends on the protocol used by the agents, and thus not only the message itself, but also the protocol appears as a parameter in the meaning. Understanding this dependence allows us to give formal explanations of a wide variety of notions including language dependence, implicature, (...) and the amount of information in a message. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophical Logic 34, 97-119, 2005.

Samatavilasa, The Radiant Sameness, shows the way of finding our fallen condition itself as redemptive. We are not merely to accept our pain and our mortal condition but to live these and become these. In becoming that pain lies our bliss, in living our mortality immortality. That alone is the highest bliss and absolute, that alone is salvation the final, this our becoming one with our mortal and absolutely tragic lot. That is what the state of samata, sameness, is. Only (...) that man is a mukta, a liberated soul, who can look alike on Maya and Brahman, on reality and appearance, on bondage and liberation, on life and death, on misery and joy. Not that there is an actual state called the state of liberation, an actual bliss that is absolute and highest, for terms like absolute and highest turn out to be relative, and, therefore, mis-leading. Hypostati-zation of samata would not work, for all hypo-statization is rooted in our narcissistic passion. Yet Samatavilasa would not, in actual fact does not, encourage us to look alike on these opposites constitutive of our mortal being as long as we fight a desperate fight against our inevitable and destined fate, fate the mortal; a stern discipline we have to undergo before we can even think of samata, sameness, not to speak of living it. For, not before dying unto himself can a man look alike on these dualities, the stuff our mortal life and being are made of. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to discuss some of the foundational issues centering around the question of integrating education in human values with professional engineering education: its necessity and justification. The paper looks at the efforts in ‘tuning’ the technical education system in India to the national goals in the various phases of curriculum development. The contribution of the engineering profession in national development and India’s self-sufficiency is crucially linked with the institutionalization of expertise and the role of morality (...) and responsibility. This linkage can be created through a proper understanding of the social role of the profession—what motivates the professionals and what makes professional life meaningful. Value education facilitates the process of moral maturity and the development of a ‘holistic’ mindset. This paper deals with the need to create such a mindset, the human values associated with it and gives examples of efforts to impart such education through ‘action-oriented’ programmes introduced in some institutes of engineering in India. (shrink)

Studies in the Philosophy of Michel Foucault : A French Alternative to Anglo-Americanism.