Studies have reported high rates of childhood maltreatment among individuals with drug addiction problems; however, investigation about the potentially protective factors to mitigate the effects of maltreatment experiences on motivation to engage in addiction treatment has received less attention. This study aims at exploring the mediating effects of forgiveness and self-efficacy on the association between childhood maltreatment and treatment motivation among drug addicts. A total of 360 male drug addicts were recruited from three mandatory inpatient rehabilitation centers in Malaysia. Participants (...) completed a package of self-report questionnaires including measures of childhood maltreatment experiences, forgiveness, self-efficacy, and motivation for treatment. The analysis conducted using the structural equation model revealed that childhood maltreatment significantly predicted lower treatment motivation, while forgiveness and self-efficacy played a fully mediating role regarding the effect of childhood maltreatment on treatment motivation. In conclusion, these findings suggest that combining the element of forgiveness and self-efficacy in treatment programs appears to benefit the drug addicts with childhood maltreatment history. (shrink)

This book explores the resonances between Deleuze’s philosophy and a range of philosophical concepts in Buddhism. Focusing on this rarely examined relationship, this book gathers perspectives from scholars around the globe to explore the continuities and discontinuities between Deleuze’s and Buddhist thought. They examine immanence, intensity, assemblages and desire, and the concepts of ethics and meditation. This volume will prove to be an important resource for readers and scholars interested in philosophy, critical theory and comparative studies. They will find this (...) an engaging and invaluable examination of two different yet similar modes of thought. (shrink)

In this study, we examined students' attitudes toward cheating and whether they would report instances of cheating they witnessed. Data were collected from three educational institutions in Singapore. A total of 518 students participated in the study. Findings suggest that students perceived cheating behaviors involving exam-related situations to be serious, whereas plagiarism was rated as less serious. Cheating in the form of not contributing one's fair share in a group project was also perceived as a serious form of academic misconduct, (...) although a majority of the students admitted having engaged in such behavior. With regard to the prevalence of academic cheating, our findings suggest that students are morally ambivalent about academic cheating and are rather tolerant of dishonesty among their peers. On the issue of whether cheating behaviors should be reported, our findings revealed that a majority of students chose to take the expedient measure of ignoring the problem rather than to blow the whistle on their peers. Implications of our findings are discussed. (shrink)

In 2005, Chinese President Hu Jintao instituted a “Harmonious Society” policy marking a new China’s approach toward development. This generated intense excitement among observers of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) who perceive an overlap in objectives between CSR and Harmonious Society and believe that Harmonious Society will lead to increased CSR engagement in China. However, there is little exploration of how Harmonious Society will contribute to increasing CSR engagement. This article seeks to explore whether Harmonious Society will meet this promise. It (...) does so by drawing up a list of actions that if taken by the government would increase the level of CSR in China and make Harmonious Society a relevant factor in the development of Chinese CSR. To do so, my article studies comparative literature on CSR development to develop a framework that divides causes of CSR in a country into environmental constraints and discretionary responses. Understanding what drives the development of CSR allows us to understand what measures the Chinese government can take to influence the level of CSR. Using this framework, my article suggests that Harmonious Society is unlikely to promote CSR in China’s growing private sector because policy measures that affect the “constraints” driving CSR are bounded by other political considerations. (shrink)

This paper makes three related points. First, Japan has played an instrumental role in helping to define the shape and substance of multilateralism in Asia in ways deeper than scholarly literature on Asia's regional architecture has allowed. A key driving force behind Japan's contributions is the perceived utility of multilateralism in facilitating Japan's engagement of and/or balancing against China. Second, Japan has been able to achieve this because of the United States' support for Asian multilateralism and Japanese security interests. In (...) the immediate post-Cold War period, Japan facilitated US participation in regional arrangements such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the ASEAN Regional Forum. But Japanese ambivalence over its dependence on the United States was also apparent in Tokyo's attempts to exclude Washington from the newly formed East Asia Summit in late 2005, despite Japan's felt need to balance China. Japan's reliance on quiet diplomacy and an implicit regional leadership has equally been instrumental to its achievements in regional integration. Third, in the light of Japan's longstanding aim to become a normal military power and adopt a more assertive policy toward China, Japan‒US security ties are likely to deepen with negative consequences for Asian multilateralism. However, if its ties with China and South Korea worsen over their islands disputes in the East China Sea, Japan risks undermining its relations with the United States. How Japan balances its normalization with a continued engagement with multilateralism could be key to a stable and secure Asia. (shrink)

This paper examines the resonances between Deleuze's theory of subjectivity and the Buddhist view of subjectivity. Although much scholarship has been focused on Deleuze's theory of subjectivity, relatively little has been directed at a comparative study of how his theory of subjectivity resonates with the idea of de-centred subjectivity in Buddhist philosophy. In addition to this, the paper explores the ethical and political implications of such a notion of subjectivity. In the first part, it examines Deleuze's theory of subjectivity and (...) in the second part, it examines the theory of subjectivity in Buddhist philosophy. In the third part, it considers the ethical implications of the Deleuzian and Buddhist theory of subjectivity. (shrink)

This paper examines a patient with borderline mental capacity, where the healthcare team is conflicted about how to proceed. This case demonstrates the complicated intersection between undue influence and mental capacity, allowing us to explore how the law is applied in clinical practice. Patients have the right to decline or accept medical treatments offered to them. In Singapore, family members perceive a right to be involved in the decision-making process for sick and elderly patients. Elderly patients, dependent on mainly family (...) members for care and support, sometimes submit to their overbearing influence resulting in decisions that fail to protect the patients’ own best interests. However, the clinicians’ own well-intentioned influence, driven by a desire for the best medical outcome can also be undue, and neither influence should seek to be a substitution for the patient’s decision. Following Re BKR [2015] SGCA 26, we are now obliged to examine how mental capacity can be affected by undue influence. A lack of capacity can be found when a patient fails to appreciate the presence of undue influence or is susceptible to undue influence due to their mental impairment causing their will to be overborne. This then paves the way for the health care team to decide based on best interests, because the patient is determined to be lacking in mental capacity. (shrink)

Purpose – This study aims to investigate the perceptions, acceptance, usage and access to social media by students and academics in higher education in informatics programs in Malaysia. A conceptual model based on Connectivism and communities of practice learning theory was developed and were used as a basis of mapping the research questions to the design frameworks and the research outcomes. A significant outcome of this study will be the development of a design framework for implementing social media as supporting (...) tools for student engagement and teaching and learning of informatics programs in higher education institutions in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach – A mixed-method research methodology with a significant survey research component was employed for this research. This methodology focused on collecting and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data to better understand the research problems. For this study, a mixed-method sequential transformative research strategy based on a QUAN-Qual model was used in the data collection process. Mixed-method research methodology is considered to be most appropriate for this study, as it allows the researcher to gather multiple forms of data from diverse audiences such as educators, administrators and students. Findings – The findings show the close matched of the ownership, amount of hours spent online, types of social media technologies used and pattern of usage between informatics and non-informatics students. It also shows that many students and instructors have started to explore and accept the use of SMTs as a tool for engaging with their institution and their peers as well as for teaching and learning purposes. Innovative institutions need to understand the critical success factors and the barriers that restrict the implementation of SMTs within the HEI to take advantage of the opportunities offered by SMTs in higher education. Research limitations/implications – The surveys and interview participant, in part, are self-selecting, so the data collected cannot be claimed to be representative of the population. However, because of the relatively large number of participants, it can be considered that the findings are indicative. Other limitation includes the depth of data that can be collected using this methodology. Practical implications – There is wide range of social media usage in educational settings now being reported, but many issues are still unexamined. Limited studies have been focusing on the educators’ readiness, acceptance or refusal in integrating social media into their courses, the perceived effectiveness of the tools and student outcomes for their learning. The central outcome of this research will be the development of a design framework that will be used as a guide for Malaysian HEIs and informatics academics to engage students using SMTs in creating effective learning communities for informatics programs. Social implications – The framework will have implication for the social interaction and engagement of students with their institution. Originality/value – Very little work has been reported on student and academic engagement, their perspectives and perceived effectiveness of social media usage in higher education, especially in the Malaysia context. Most of the research focused only on the quantitative research with students from universities in the USA and Australia, with an emphasis mainly on student’s perception and acceptance. There are calls for more research to examine how social media is perceived and accepted by students and academics for teaching and learning, especially in Malaysia. (shrink)

There are tensions within formal education between imparting knowledge and the development of skills for handling that knowledge. In the primary school sector, the latter can also be squeezed out of the curriculum by a focus on basic skills such as literacy and numeracy. What happens when an explicit attempt is made to develop young children's reasoning—both in terms of their apparent cognitive abilities and their basic skills? This paper reports an independent evaluation of an in-class intervention called ‘Philosophy for (...) Children’, after just over one year of schooling. The intervention aims to help children become more willing and able to question, reason, construct arguments and collaborate with others. A group of 48 volunteer schools were randomised to receive P4C or act as a control for one year. This paper reports the CAT results for all pupils in years 4 and 5 initially, and the Key Stage 2 attainment in English and Maths for those starting in year 5. There was no school dropout. Individual attrition from a total of 3,159 pupils was around 11 percent—roughly equal between groups. There were small positive ‘effect’ sizes in favour of the P4C group in progress in reading and maths, and even smaller perhaps negligible improvements in CAT scores and writing. The results for the most disadvantaged pupils were larger for attainment, but not for CATs. Observations and interviews suggest that the intervention was generally enjoyable and thought to be beneficial for pupil confidence. Our conclusion is that, for those wishing to improve attainment outcomes in the short term, an emphasis on developing reasoning is promising, especially for the poorest students, but perhaps not the most effective way forward. However, for those who value reasoning for its own sake, this evaluation demonstrates that using curriculum time in this way does not damage attainment, and so suggests that something like P4C is an appropriate educational approach. (shrink)

There are tensions within formal education between imparting knowledge and the development of skills for handling that knowledge. In the primary school sector, the latter can also be squeezed out of the curriculum by a focus on basic skills such as literacy and numeracy. What happens when an explicit attempt is made to develop young children's reasoning—both in terms of their apparent cognitive abilities and their basic skills? This paper reports an independent evaluation of an in-class intervention called ‘Philosophy for (...) Children’, after just over one year of schooling. The intervention aims to help children become more willing and able to question, reason, construct arguments and collaborate with others. A group of 48 volunteer schools were randomised to receive P4C or act as a control for one year. This paper reports the CAT results for all pupils in years 4 and 5 initially, and the Key Stage 2 attainment in English and Maths for those starting in year 5. There was no school dropout. Individual attrition from a total of 3,159 pupils was around 11 percent—roughly equal between groups. There were small positive ‘effect’ sizes in favour of the P4C group in progress in reading and maths, and even smaller perhaps negligible improvements in CAT scores and writing. The results for the most disadvantaged pupils were larger for attainment, but not for CATs. Observations and interviews suggest that the intervention was generally enjoyable and thought to be beneficial for pupil confidence. Our conclusion is that, for those wishing to improve attainment outcomes in the short term, an emphasis on developing reasoning is promising, especially for the poorest students, but perhaps not the most effective way forward. However, for those who value reasoning for its own sake, this evaluation demonstrates that using curriculum time in this way does not damage attainment, and so suggests that something like P4C is an appropriate educational approach. (shrink)

Over the last few years, automatic facial micro-expression analysis has garnered increasing attention from experts across different disciplines because of its potential applications in various fields such as clinical diagnosis, forensic investigation and security systems. Advances in computer algorithms and video acquisition technology have rendered machine analysis of facial micro-expressions possible today. Although the study of facial micro-expressions is a well-established field in psychology, it is still relatively new from the computational perspective with many interesting problems. In this survey, we (...) present a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art databases and methods for micro-expressions spotting and recognition. Individual stages involved in the automation of these tasks are also described and reviewed at length. In addition, we also deliberate on the challenges and future directions in this growing field of automatic facial micro-expression analysis. (shrink)

Effective human–robot teaming increasingly requires humans to work with intelligent, autonomous machines. However, novel features of intelligent autonomous systems such as social agency and incomprehensibility may influence the human’s trust in the machine. The human operator’s mental model for machine functioning is critical for trust. People may consider an intelligent machine partner as either an advanced tool or as a human-like teammate. This article reports a study that explored the role of individual differences in the mental model in a simulated (...) environment. Multiple dispositional factors that may influence the dominant mental model were assessed. These included the Robot Threat Assessment, which measures the person’s propensity to apply tool and teammate models in security contexts. Participants were paired with an intelligent robot tasked with making threat assessments in an urban setting. A transparency manipulation was used to influence the dominant mental model. For half of the participants, threat assessment was described as physics-based ; the remainder received transparency information that described psychological cues. We expected that the physics-based transparency messages would guide the participant toward treating the robot as an advanced machine, while psychological messaging would encourage perceptions of the robot as acting like a human partner. We also manipulated situational danger cues present in the simulated environment. Participants rated their trust in the robot’s decision as well as threat and anxiety, for each of 24 urban scenes. They also completed the RoTA and additional individual-difference measures. Findings showed that trust assessments reflected the degree of congruence between the robot’s decision and situational danger cues, consistent with participants acting as Bayesian decision makers. Several scales, including the RoTA, were more predictive of trust when the robot was making psychology-based decisions, implying that trust reflected individual differences in the mental model of the robot as a teammate. These findings suggest scope for designing training that uncovers and mitigates the individual’s biases toward intelligent machines. (shrink)

PurposeThis study aims to describe the adverse events following immunization of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in cancer patients/survivors associated with their psychological distress.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted to assess AEFIs after the receipt of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in cancer patients/survivors attending a university hospital in Malaysia. Psychological distress was measured using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale before and after the first and second doses of COVID-19 vaccine.ResultsA total of 217 complete responses were received. Compared with before vaccination, both HADS Anxiety and HADS (...) Depression scores were significantly reduced after the first and second dose of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Most of the participants had mild-or-moderate systemic and local AEFIs, with the most common being pain at the injection site, tiredness, and headache for both the first and second doses of the vaccine. Positive correlations between the total AEFI score and HADS-A and HADS-D scores were observed after the first dose of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Similarly, positive associations were observed between the total AEFI score and HADS-A and HADS-D scores after the second dose of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.ConclusionMild-to-moderate AEFIs found in this study help address vaccine hesitancy in cancer patients/survivors. Receiving the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine had a positive effect on decreasing psychological distress in cancer patients/survivors. High severity of an AEFI was associated with higher anxiety and depressive symptoms. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically altered the education sector. Rather than the impact of COVID-19, many higher education institutions are on the verge of insolvency due to a lack of digital transformation readiness and poor business models. The bleak financial future many HEIs will face while others may be forced to close their doors completely will erode HEIs’ ability to fulfil their societal responsibilities. However, HEIs that have survived and maintained their operations anticipate the transition to online learning or the (...) effects of any economic crisis, including university closures in the short, medium, or long term. The entire educational ecosystem was forced to transform its operations quickly and entirely to an online teaching-learning scenario in just a few weeks. Notably, HEIs that have long offered online courses worldwide can easily transition to digital teaching and learning when necessary. The second roundtable session’s result of the International Higher Education Conference, organized by INTI International University on March 31 2022, was used to organize a Delphi method to identify further factors that positively impact HEIs by COVID-19. The importance of these factors was then determined using Kendall’s coefficient of concordance. Recommendations on how HEIs should move towards institutional sustainability during the endemic phase are presented accordingly. (shrink)

Kant's epistemology and the Buddhist philosophy are an idealism. But these two different philosophies have in themselves the contradictory element, namely the element of the outer sense of bodies and of the inner mind. Although Kant's transcendental idealism and the school Vijnanavadin (唯識學派) acknowledge only the representations and the consciousnesses., the mind need to be affected by the outer part. In Kant's theoretical philosophy the outer sense of bodies plays an alien role. It stands outside the subject. In spite of (...) this, the subject have to relate itself to the outer element. And in the Buddhism, in order to have consciousnesses, the subject have to be transformed from the fundamental ground, the Alayavijnana (第8 識). But the Alyavijnana need to have a certain moment in order to be transformed. In my paper I have concentrated myself on the problem of relation of the mind to the matter. I have tried to see into the way in which these two philosophies develop this relation. Moreover I am also interested in the problem in relation to the theoretical, practical, and aesthetical fields. (shrink)

In his comments, Daniel Nicholls succeeds in saying more than a few things that I had scarcely realized about the ways in which I write and, therefore, of what I tend to take for granted. He sees in what I write a capacity ‘to utilize the “obvious” whilst at the same time saying something about it.’ Not every philosopher would take that as a compliment. Many philosophers and philosophies have quite other pretensions – to transcend the illusions of common thought (...) and perception towards a higher plane of metaphysical philosophy – or of physics and mathematics. I find that Nicholls’s remark both compliments and complements my work, however. The use of everyday language and example to disturb that everyday world to ‘bring it into high relief’ as Nicholls puts it – is a significant part of philosophical method. To juxtapose the esoteric language of metaphysics (being-in-itself, being-for-itself, being-for-others) with the everyday (what there is, living for oneself, living for others) is to haunt the everyday with a metaphysical imagination even as it reveals what metaphysics had erased from the coinage of common words. (I am thinking, of course, of Derrida’s remarks about Anatole France’s satirical view of philosophical language as coinage from which all marking has been erased). (shrink)

When we see something in a picture, do we enjoy visual experience as of the depicted object? Gombrichians say yes: when viewing ordinary pictures we simultaneously see the picture and seem to see its object. But why, then, isn’t seeing-in contradictory, and how are these two elements somehow integrated into a single experience? Gombrichians’ attempts to answer appeal either to our awareness of the picture’s design, or to the idea that picture and object are not given as in the (...) same place. I argue that neither answer is successful, and thus that Gombrichianism is false. (shrink)

John V. Taylor was a missionary statesman, ecumenist, Africanist, onetime General Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, and later Anglican Bishop of Winchester. His work offers a theology and practice of Christian mission which is faithful to scripture while fully facing the facts of the contemporary world at the beginning of the third millennium. Does Christian evangelism promote sectarianism and violence, or can it contribute to harmony and peace in the global village? Can Christians extol the true significance of Jesus (...) Christ without demeaning others? Who is God and how does God's nature shape ours? This book tackles these and other vital issues by giving the first major account of the life and thought of one of the 20th century's greatest religious thinkers. Here is an example and tutor to any thoughtful Christian. Consistently incarnational and sacramental in his approach, Taylor seeks to live out the truths he discovers in his daily ministry as poet, priest and prophet - inviting those around him to share the way of Christ. Taylor is also author of major works such as "The Go-Between God", his book on the Holy Spirit, and "The Christlike God", where he outlines the distinctive Christian insight into God as the patient, generous, self-sacrificing love we see in Jesus. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that Edmund Husserl’s theory of depiction describes a three-fold experience of seeing something in pictures, whereas Richard Wollheim’s theory is a two-fold experience of seeingin. The aim of this article is to show that Wollheim’s theory can be interpreted as a three-fold experience of seeing-in. I will first give an overview of Wollheim and Husserl’s theories of seeing-in, and will then show how the concept of figuration in Wollheim’s theory is analogous to the (...) concept of the image subject as the depicted object in Husserl’s theory. I will claim that our experience of non-figurative pictures is a two-fold seeing-in, while that of figurative pictures is a three-fold seeing-in. (shrink)

In the constitution of contemporary image theory, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy has undoubtedly become a major conceptual reference. Rather than trying to establish what Wittgenstein’s own image theory could possibly look like, this paper would like to critically assess some of the advantages as well as some of the quandaries that arise when using Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘seeing-as’ for addressing the plural realities of images. While putting into evidence the tensions that come into play when applying what was initially a (...) theory of the gaze to a theory of the image, the paper shall subsequently discuss three modes of iconic vision: the propositional seeing-as, the projective seeing-in and the medial seeing-with. (shrink)

Philosophers of art use the term ‘seeing-in’ to describe an important part of our experience of pictures: we often ‘see’ a picture’s subject matter ‘in’ its surface. This paper proposes that seeing-in is illuminated by a perceptual phenomenon that has received extensive attention in perceptual psychology: the perception of transparency. It is generally accepted that transparency perception is governed by laws of ‘scission’. I argue that some instances of seeing-in can be straightforwardly understood as a kind of (...) transparency effect, and that all seeing-in is illuminated by these laws. (shrink)

This paper investigates a contemporary flowering of flânerie similar to that which Walter Benjamin analyzed in the first decades of the Parisian arcades. The flâneur has resurrected in a new space of the recent past as the computer hacker of digital culture. There is, however, a significant difference between the two figures’ ways of relating to the world that gives the hacker an important socio-political agency – with which Benjamin tried, unsuccessfully, to imbue in the flâneur.

Do we need light to see? I argue that the black experience of a man in a perfectly dark cave is a representation of an absence of light, not an absence of representation. There is certainly a difference between his perceptual knowledge and that of his blind companion. Only the sighted man can tell whether the cave is dark just by looking. But perhaps he is merely inferring darkness from his failure to see. To get an unambiguous answer, I switch (...) the focus from perceptual knowledge to non-epistemic seeing. My conclusion is that we see even in the limiting case of absolute darkness - regardless of whether we believe we are seeing. We see little of pratical interest. But in terms of basic information, we see about as much as we do when the lights are on. Depending on what has gone before and after, we may even see ordinary objects. (shrink)

In recent years, the phenomenological approach to empathy becomes increasingly influential in explaining social perception of other people. Yet, it leaves untouched a related and pivotal question concerning the unique and irreducible intentionality of empathy that constitutes the peculiarity of social perception. In this article, I focus on this problem by drawing upon Husserl’s theory of image-consciousness, and I suggest that empathy is characterized by a “seeing-in” structure. I develop two theses so as to further explicate the seeing-in (...) structure in question: first, empathy as a phenomenologically sui generis act is an intentional fusion of both presentation and re-presentation; and second, empathic intentionality is in essence twofold in that it is at once directed at both the other’s sensuously given body and the other’s non-sensuously given mentality. In this light, I argue that empathy is better conceived as a quasi-perceptual act that is fundamentally different from external perception simpliciter and other complex acts such as signitive, recollective and imaginative intention. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to argue against the semiotic reading of Husserl’s theory of depiction according to which depiction [Abbildung] must necessarily involve symbolic function. I aim to show that Husserl’s notes on depiction can be divided into two parts: those that deal with internal depiction and those concerned with external depiction. This division provides a constructive way to explain Husserl’s asemiotic view on depiction, but it has not received proper attention from Husserlian scholars. Accordingly, I aim to (...) show that it is internal depiction that is clearly deprived of any symbolic function. (shrink)

Notwithstanding Plato’s venerable opinion, many people nowadays claim either that mirrors are not pictures, or that, if they are such, they are just transparent pictures in Kendall Walton’s sense of a particular kind of picture. In this article, however, I want to argue that mirrors are bona fide pictures. For they are grasped via what, as I assume in the article, makes a picture a picture, that is, a representation with a figurative value, namely, a depiction; namely, a certain (...) class='Hi'>seeing-in experience. This is the sui generis perceptual experience that Richard Wollheim originally appealed to. Once this experience is suitably reconceived, one can show how it successfully applies to mirrors as well, in order to prove that they are bona fide pictures. From an aesthetical point of view, this is an important result. For it shows that the class of pictures is broader than what people nowadays think and is closer to the original intuition sustaining Plato’s opinion. (shrink)

According to the standard view of pictorial reference, a picture produces singular thought in virtue of both its appearance and its history. Zeimbekis (2010) challenges this view, arguing that the perception of the picture's appearance does not contribute to the production of singular thought. The paper defends the standard view from Zeimbekis' challenge, specifying the roles of appearance and history in pictorial reference. While knowledge about the picture's history allows one to identify the standpoint from which to see the scene (...) depicted, the perception of the picture's appearance exploits that standpoint to single out individuals in that scene. (shrink)

Recent work on seeing-in has taken a pluralist turn. There is variety among pictures, so we should expect variety among seeing-in. Dominic Lopes’s taxonomy of seeing-in is arguably the most thorough that is currently available. Lopes identifies five varieties of seeing-in. In this paper I identify a sixth: pseudo-actualism. This paper improves our current best taxonomy of seeing-in.

Abhidharma, the genre of knowledge concerned with putting into systematic shape what the Buddha taught, can seem a forbidding subject. In this essay, taking Skandhila’s Introduction to Abhidharma and Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya as touchstones, I will try to shed a little philosophical light on Abhidharma as a variety of epistemic culture in the long fifth century C.E. in South Asia. To think of Abhidharma as an epistemic culture is not only to think of what goes into the making of knowledge and (...) its justification. It is also a way to counter-point presentations of domains of inquiry which stress the retroactive organization and unity of knowledge at the expense of the heterogeneity that goes into its making. More particularly, what is at stake is a feel for the diversity of epistemic machinery Abhidharma can involve and why such diversity can matter. The essay concludes with a consideration of Vasubandhu’s closing remarks, which suggest the importance of temporal contexts of intellectual practice in which certain styles of knowledge and virtues associated with knowledge may acquire variable salience. (shrink)

When I am looking at an apple, I perceptually attribute certain properties to certain entities. Two questions arise: what are these entities (what is it that I perceptually represent as having properties) and what are these properties (what properties I perceive this entity as having)? This paper is about the former, less widely explored, question: what does our perceptual system attribute properties to? In other words, what are these ‘sensory individuals’. There have been important debates in philosophy of perception about (...) what sensory individuals would be the most plausible candidates for which sense modalities. The aim of this paper is to ask a related question about picture perception: what is the sensory individual of picture perception? When we look at a picture and see an apple depicted in it, what kind of entity do we see? What do we perceptually attribute properties to? I argue that the most straightforward candidates (ordinary objects, sui generis sensory individuals, no sensory individuals) are all problematic and that the most plausible candidate for the sensory individuals of picture perception are spatiotemporal regions. (shrink)