Biography of Jiddu Krishnamurti, 1895-1986, Indian philosopher.

Treatise with auto-commentary on Dvaita philosophy.

In this paper, I explore the links between liberal political theory and the evaluative nature of medical classification, arguing for stronger recognition of those links in a liberal model of medical practice. All judgments of medical or psychiatric "dysfunction," I argue, are fundamentally evaluative, reflecting our collective willingness or reluctance to tolerate and/or accommodate the conditions in question. Illness, then, is "socially constructed." But the relativist worries that this loaded phrase evokes are unfounded; patients, doctors, and communities will agree in (...) the vast majority of cases about what counts as illness. Where they cannot come to agreement, however, we are faced with precisely the sort of dispute about values and ways of life that the institutions of the liberal state are designed to accommodate. I accordingly sketch a model of medical practice, based loosely on Jürgen Habermas's political theories, designed to maximize both our awareness and our understanding of these disputes. (shrink)

Study of Śivasvarodaya, work on yoga; includes original Sanskrit text with English translation.

Contributed articles on Indic philosophy, Vedic grammer, and classical Sanskrit literature; includes some on the life of Kr̥ṣṇa Mādho Jha, Sanskrit scholar.

Individual semiotic systems interpreting their environment are not well understood from the externalist approach typical of the scientific method. Science constructs probabilities describing large populations of systems, not individuals. The Umwelt, as the individually experienced/created aspects of the habitat aspect of its population’s ecological niche, is given an internalist understanding within the framework of the compositional hierarchy. Vagueness is an important aspect of the internalist condition. It is selectively reduced momentarily by creative choices that can have a Peircean semiotic formulation, (...) and which are often unpredictable externally, thereby appearing to be chance events. (shrink)

Drawing on various historical documents, the article uses process tracing methods and analytic narratives to establish a relationship between historical contractual practices and state formation in nineteenth-century East Africa. I trace the process through which local political leaders historically sought to secure monopolistic deals over trade with foreign entrepreneurs through incomplete contracts for tangible economic goods and intangible political goods or services. By showcasing agents’ bargaining strategies in contractual agreements, the article sheds light on notions of sovereignty and independence articulated (...) through public contracting in Africa’s political development. Historical understandings of notions of independence and sovereignty by procurement practitioners in East Africa provide seeds for thought in controversial debates about government outsourcing today. Is outsourced sovereignty always threatening? Can we outsource sovereignty and remain independent? These are perhaps the most important conceptual queries that make East Africa’s historical contractual experience pertinent today as new public-private partnerships for development, including government outsourcing, increasingly call for the use of private means to solve public problems in the developing countries. (shrink)

Life and works of Vācaspatimiśra, fl. 976-1000, Hindu philosopher; with special reference to his contribution to the Advaita school.

Many psychological studies of categorization and reasoning use undergraduates to make claims about human conceptualization. Generalizability of findings to other populations is often assumed but rarely tested. Even when comparative studies are conducted, it may be challenging to interpret differences. As a partial remedy, in the present studies we adopt a 'triangulation strategy' to evaluate the ways expertise and culturally different belief systems can lead to different ways of conceptualizing the biological world. We use three groups (US bird experts, US (...) undergraduates, and ordinary Itza' Maya) and two sets of birds (North American and Central American). Categorization tasks show considerable similarity among the three groups' taxonomic sorts, but also systematic differences. Notably, US expert categorization is more similar to Itza' than to US novice categorization. The differences are magnified on inductive reasoning tasks where only undergraduates show patterns of judgment that are largely consistent with current models of category-based taxonomic inference. The Maya commonly employ causal and ecological reasoning rather than taxonomic reasoning. Experts use a mixture of strategies (including causal and ecological reasoning), only some of which current models explain. US and Itza' informants differed markedly when reasoning about passerines (songbirds), reflecting the somewhat different role that songbirds play in the two cultures. The results call into question the importance of similarity-based notions of typicality and central tendency in natural categorization and reasoning. These findings also show that relative expertise leads to a convergence of thought that transcends cultural boundaries and shared experiences. (shrink)

Research suggests political identity has strong influence over individuals’ attitudes and beliefs, which in turn can affect their behavior. Likewise, firsthand experience with an issue can also affect attitudes and beliefs. A large survey of Americans was analyzed to investigate the effects of both political identity and personal impact on individuals’ reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic. Results show that political identity and personal impact influenced the American public’s attitudes about and response to COVID-19. Consistent with prior research, political identity exerted (...) a strong influence on self-reports of emotional distress, threat perception, discomfort with exposure, support for restrictions, and perception of under/overreaction by individuals and institutions. The difference between Democrats and Republican responses were consistent with their normative value differences and with the contemporary partisan messaging. Personal impact exerted a comparatively weaker influence on reported emotional distress and threat perception. Both factors had a weak influence on appraisal of individual and government responses. The dominating influence of political identity carried over into the bivariate relations among these self-reported attitudes and responses. In particular, the appraisal of government response divided along party lines, tied to opposing views of whether there has been over- or under-reaction to the pandemic. The dominance of political identity has important implications for crisis management and reflects the influence of normative value differences between the parties, partisan messaging on the pandemic, and polarization in American politics. (shrink)

Abstract:S. N. Balagangadhara, Sarika Rao, Jakob De Roover, and Marianne Keppens One of the best-known aspects of Indian society is its "rigid caste system" and the "evil practices of untouchability." It is a truism today to say that Indian society is divided into four castes, which are not allowed to mix. Many Indian texts are brought forward as evidence of this understanding of Indian society. The ancient Indian text Mānavadharmaśāstra or "Laws of Manu" takes a central place in such accounts. (...) This is especially the case for its verses on varṇasankara, translated as "mixing of social classes" or "intermixture of castes." Given the important role these verses play in the understanding of Indian culture, society, and policymaking, it is crucial to translate them accurately. Using one verse in one text, this article focuses on the standard translation and deals both critically and constructively with the received view. (shrink)

Грамматика разума представляет собой новую для нашего времени науку, хотя создана она была еще в первой трети XIX века великим немецким ученым В. Гегелем. В предлагаемой Вашему вниманию книге данная наука впервые излагается в краткой доступной форме.

Commemoration volume of Mahamahopadhyaya Bālakr̥ṣṇa Misŕa, 1887-1943, Sanskrit author; contributed research papers on Hindu philosophy, Sanskrit grammar and Vedic literature and some on his life and works.

Study of Śrībhāṣya of Rāmānuja, 1017-1137, commentary on Brahmasūtra of Bādarāyaṇa, aphoristic work on Vedanta philosophy.

Stuart, SN An extraordinary concentration of intellectual effort in Vienna during 1924 to 1936 produced a new standard of philosophy which remains an important touchstone today, despite some shortcomings which have become apparent. The contributors were animated to regain clarity of collective thought, felt to be lost in the convulsion of the Great War. As its topics were quickly taken up in Prague and Berlin, Cambridge and Harvard, the Vienna Circle came to exert an important, international influence on the intellectual (...) and scientific history of the twentieth century. In particular, its program for separating knowledge from nonsense informed the emerging international Humanist movement. (shrink)

This article addresses the ways in which art and philosophy have been discursively used to conceptualize critical political changes and frame narratives of liberation by including and excluding primitive consciousness simultaneously. More concretely, it analyzes the contribution of art and philosophy to the understanding of history and post-history through different representations of black bodies, black desires, and black agencies in the novels She (1886) by Rider Haggard and The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911) by W. E. B. Du Bois. (...) At stake is the question of the archeology of the past as a living memory in the post-historical time. This past is politically relevant especially if its cognitive fossils negate the idea of exhausted primitive consciousness in the modern world and give meanings to incongruous bedfellows such as civilization and slavery, neoliberalism and poverty, democracy and Nazism, globalization, terrorism and racism, liberalism and homophobia. Arguably, the triumph of scientific ideas has left us with a perpetual quest for liberation rather than the actualization of liberation as a world phenomenon. I hypothesize the relation between exhaustible elements of technical consciousness simulating progress and their inexhaustible materiality at critical historical junctures as a struggle for taste and self-determination. Critical in this relation is the sense that not only primitive stages of consciousness are never fully exhausted at historical junctures, but that one never comes close to thinking about genuine liberation without engaging with real world matters both domestic/intimate and foreign. (shrink)