This book presents the first systematic account of dependency care in a liberal theory of justice. Despite the fact that receiving dependency care is necessary for human survival, the practices with which we meet society’s care needs are seldom recognized for their functional role. Instead, norms about gender and race obscure and shape expectations about whose needs for care are legitimate as well as about whose caregiving labor more advantaged members of society will receive. These opaque arrangements must be made (...) visible if we are to remedy skewed intuitions and judgements about care. Freedom to Care develops a modified form of social contract theory with which to evaluate society’s caregiving arrangements. Building on work by feminist liberals and care ethicists, it reframes debates about care to move beyond gender with an inequality-tracking framework that can be employed in any culture. Because care provision has been enmeshed in the subordination of women and people of color, eliminating the invisibility of these forms of labor yields a critical liberal theory of justice with feminist and anti-racist aims. (shrink)

This essay assess the compatibility of Eva Kittay's dependency critique with Rawlsian political liberalism. I argue for the inclusion of a modified version of Kittay's revisions within Rawlsian theory in order to yield a theory that suppports a substantial subset of dependency work. Beyond these selected changes, however, I argue that Kittay's other proposed changes should not be included because they are incompatible with Rawls, and furthermore, their incorporation does not yield a theory that includes utter dependents.

The study explored the role of moral identity in the civic engagement of youth through ethical ideology. A total of 217 individuals comprising of 104 girls and 113 boys completed three scales, namely, moral identity scale, ethics position questionnaire and civic engagement scale.The results showed that moral identity internalization significantly predicted civic engagement attitude and moral identity symbolization significantly predicted civic engagement behaviour. Furthermore, idealism partially mediated the relationship between moral identity and civic engagement.

The introduction of the notion of family resemblance represented a major shift in Wittgenstein’s thoughts on the meaning of words, moving away from a belief that words were well defined, to a view that words denoted less well defined categories of meaning. This paper presents the use of the notion of family resemblance in the area of machine learning as an example of the benefits that can accrue from adopting the kind of paradigm shift taken by Wittgenstein. The paper presents (...) a model capable of learning exemplars using the principle of family resemblance and adopting Bayesian networks for a representation of exemplars. An empirical evaluation is presented on three data sets and shows promising results that suggest that previous assumptions about the way we categories need reopening. (shrink)

RésuméDans cet article, je réponds à Clark Wolf, Elizabeth Edenberg et Helga Varden. Partageant des sympathies pour le libéralisme opposé à l'oppression et pour la théorie du contrat social, ils me recommandent avec insistance de développer ma théorie dans des directions nouvelles — respectivement comme une forme de justice pour tous les sujets, avec une justification politique libérale, et suivant la conception kantienne de « droit privé ». Je réponds en expliquant que l'inclusivité est incorporée dans l'idée même du schéma (...) des relations de soin (« arrow of care map ») que je mets de l'avant, comme elle est inscrite dans la variété des théories contractuelles que je soutiens. De plus, j'insiste sur le fait que le libéralisme qui rejette l'oppression ne doit pas formuler ses arguments seulement dans les termes de la politique libérale. (shrink)

Tax law changes at a startling rate - not only does societal change bring with it demands for change in the tax system, but changes in the political climate will force change, as will many other competing pressures. With this pace of change, it is easy to focus on the practical and forget the core underpinnings of the tax system and their philosophical justifications. Taking a pause to remind ourselves of those principles and how they can operate in the modern (...) tax system is crucial to ensuring that the tax system does not diverge too far from what it should be or could be. It is essential to understand the answers to some of the seemingly basic questions that surround tax before we can even begin to think about what a tax system should look like. This collection brings together major themes and difficult questions in the philosophical foundations of tax law. The chapters consider practical issues such as justification, enforcement, design, and mechanics, and provide a full and coherent analysis of the basis for tax law. Philosophical Foundations of Tax Law allows the reader to consider how tax systems should move forward in the modern world, with a sound philosophical basis, to provide the practical tax system that the state requires and citizens deserve. (shrink)

By his own admission, Roland Barthes was seemingly remiss in not placing Georges Bataille within his account of ‘zero degree’ writing. This article draws inference from this fact, but specifically examines commonalities between Bataille’s heterology and Barthes’ late project on the Neutral. The article works through Barthes’ two key articles on Bataille, ‘The Metaphor of the Eye’ and ‘Outcomes of the Text’, and also considers Bataille’s statement on informe, a concept that can be said to resonate with Barthes’ use of (...) the Neutral. Neither term refers to specific ‘forms’, but rather an ‘operation’ of writing, as a means of undoing knowledge without its disavowal. An account is given of the commonalities of Bataille’s ‘general economy’ and what might be termed Barthes’ Neutral economy. Emphasis is placed upon their practice of writing as ethical responses in the ‘preparations’ of knowledge: to be judicious to what forms in and around knowledge, allowing as much for pauses as the possibilities of thought. (shrink)

The vital data about the electrical activities of the brain are carried by the electroencephalography signals. The recordings of the electrical activity of brain neurons in a rhythmic and spontaneous manner from the scalp surface are measured by EEG. One of the most important aspects in the field of neuroscience and neural engineering is EEG signal analysis, as it aids significantly in dealing with the commercial applications as well. To uncover the highly useful information for neural classification activities, EEG studies (...) incorporated with machine learning provide good results. In this study, a Fusion Hybrid Model with Singular Value Decomposition Based Estimation of Robust Parameters is proposed for efficient feature extraction of the biosignals and to understand the essential information it has for analyzing the brain functionality. The essential features in terms of parameter components are extracted using the developed hybrid model, and a specialized hybrid swarm technique called Hybrid Differential Particle Artificial Bee algorithm is proposed for feature selection. To make the EEG more practical and to be used in a plethora of applications, the robust classification of these signals is necessary thereby relying less on the trained professionals. Therefore, the classification is done initially using the proposed Zero Inflated Poisson Mixture Regression Model and then it is also classified with a deep learning methodology, and the results are compared with other standard machine learning techniques. This proposed flow of methodology is validated on a few standard Biosignal datasets, and finally, a good classification accuracy of 98.79% is obtained for epileptic dataset and 98.35% is obtained for schizophrenia dataset. (shrink)

The volume brings to life a number of the conference themes including corporate social responsibility, culture, academic integrity, vulnerability, health, military ethics, education, leadership, sustainability and philosophy and addresses concerns of many leading applied ethicists.

As the introduction and lead article for a special issue of Theory, Culture & Society, ‘Neutral Life/Late Barthes’, this article offers an overview of the ‘new’ Barthes that emerges from the late writings and recent ‘Barthes Studies’. The account centres upon the posthumous publication of Barthes’ three key lecture courses delivered at the Collège de France, at the end of the 1970s, which reflect his preoccupation with the everyday, yet reveal a new degree of sophistication, both formal and conceptual. Presented (...) in their original note form, the lectures present perhaps the clearest affirmative project of Barthes’ entire career. The Neutral in particular is pivotal in understanding an ethics of the late works. While Barthes is perhaps most cited for his rumination on the temporality of the photograph, the lecture courses give rise to an ethics of space and distance, rather than of time and telos. Crucially, for Barthes, the Neutral is not neutrality; it is not divestment, but ‘an ardent, burning activity’. In establishing Barthes’ ethics of a Neutral Life, the articles closes – with reference to Derrida’s mourning of Barthes – with a reminder to read Barthes again, or rather a reminder of our current postponed reading of him. (shrink)

Once we shift the intension of the concept of wage-labour from juridical attributes of negative ownership and contractual freedom to the actual performance of capital-positing labour, the extension of the concept – the cases that fall under it – changes as well. Once the concept of wage-labour is intensively re-defined as capital-positing labour, it becomes evident that the history and the geographical scope of wage-labour have not been well understood. This shift in the intension of the concept of wage-labour also (...) disjoins the association between capitalism and freedom. (shrink)

Inequalities in expectations to receive care permeate social structures, reinforcing racialized and gendered hierarchies. Harming the people who are overburdened and disadvantaged as caregivers, these inequalities also shape the subjectivities and corporeal habits of the class of people who expect to receive care from others. With three examples, I illustrate a series of justificatory asymmetries across gender and racial lines that illustrate asymmetries in deference and attendance to the needs of others as well as assertions of the rightful occupation of (...) space. These justificatory asymmetries are cogent reasons to evaluate the justice of caregiving arrangements in a way that tracks data about who cares for whom, which can be understood by the concept of the arrow of care map. I suggest, therefore, that the arrow of care map is a necessary component of any critical care theory. In addition, employing a method called living counterfactually, I show that when women of color assert full claimant status, we are reversing arrows of care, which then elicits resistance and violence from varied actors in the real world. These considerations together contribute to further defense of the theory of liberal dependency care’s constructivism, which combines hypothetical acceptability with autonomy skills in the real world. Each level, in turn, relies on the transparency of care practices in the real world as enabled by the arrow of care map. (shrink)

In ‘Zones of Indeterminacy: Art, Body and Politics in Daoist Thought’, Peng Yu foregrounds the concept of Xu from Zhuangzi’s philosophical writings, and relates this to questions about the political body. Xu refers to a Daoist notion of ambiguity, though it remains unclear as to how to fully define the term. The article explores its meaning through reference to debates of the body, but also liubai painting, which refers to the idea of ‘leaving blankness’, associated with Chinese ink painting. For (...) Peng Yu, the notion of Xu can help us to consider a ‘politics of indeterminacy’ – a means of redefining the status of subject within power structures, or rather a radical re-articulation of how we refer to power relations in the first place. In this interview, with Sunil Manghani and Cheng-Chu Weng, Peng Yu outlines and elaborates upon the main themes of the article. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics makes some very significant observations about nature. Unfortunately, these observations remain a mystery because they do not fit into and/or cannot be explained through classical mechanics. However, we can still explore the philosophical and practical implications of these observations. This article aims to explain philosophical and practical implications of one of the most important observations of quantum mechanics – uncertainty or the arbitrariness in the behavior of particles.

This commentary introduces a section of the journal titled ‘Notes on Structuralism’. It centres around two interviews. The first, from 1987, is with the structural anthropologist Mary Douglas (who speaks on various aspects of her work, including on Purity and Danger). The second is an interview with Roland Barthes, who, speaking in 1965, was at the height of his structuralist phase. The interview focuses upon the structural analysis of narrative and prefigures the well-known volume of Communications on the subject. The (...) interviews are supplemented with introductions and: a commentary on Barthes’ interview by Jonathan Culler, who contextualizes the development of Barthes’ thinking around narrative (as it leads to the publication of S/Z), The article concludes with reflections on structuralism with regards to contemporary practices of big data, AI and large language models. (shrink)

In the world today, human beings are confronted with a number of problems due ultimately to the apparent conflicts among the different religions (religious faiths). Religious attitudes, ideas, and practices differ and even seem to be incompatible with one another. I argue, however, that these faiths do not contradict. To see this, we need to engage in the comparative study of religion. This will show that the ultimate aim of all the world's religions is to establish unity among people, and (...) will thereby provide a basis for tolerance and understanding on the part of the followers of every religion towards other religions. (shrink)

Lab VIEW is frameworks designing programming for applications that require test, estimation, and control with fast access to equipment and information experiences. Lab VIEW By National Instruments is very good graphical programming tool for Engineers. Lab VIEW can be interface may peripheral devices for getting data from surrounding, different type of sensors and other hardware. In this Paper we are showing interfacing of PLC to Lab VIEW software for our application.

The article examines the nature of mobile phone text messaging, or `txting', in the context of a discourse of love. It draws links between the txt message and the much older, revered form of love messaging, Japanese tanka poetry. In cutting across both a historical and technological divide, it seeks to elucidate a more subtle understanding of how text messaging — from a literary perspective — plays its part in amorous exchange and argues how it has the capacity to enable (...) individuals to affirm their own private thoughts, feelings and anxieties. Taking a cue from Michel Foucault's late work, concerned with the philosophical precept of `care of the self', the article argues that these differing forms of exchange — as `tender' technologies of the self and inter-subjectivity — go beyond any one medium or age of media. Aspects of our relationships are worked out in the silent confines of being alone with text and, in the case today, with text messaging, making for the potential of a new poetics of time and space. While we cannot free ourselves from the lover's code or discourse, there is the potential for an affirmation of our part in its production, which prompts a question about how we might go on to research the currently missing archive of text messaging. (shrink)

This text was first published in Theory, Culture & Society, May 13, 2015. For a special issue of Body & Society on ‘Rhythm, Movement, Embodiment', Paola Crespi presents two previously untranslated texts, Rudolf Bode's ‘Rhythm and its Importance for Education' and Rudolf Laban's ‘Eurhythmy and Kakorhythmy'. In the following interview she uncovers further unpublished and untranslated sources and she discusses some of the main themes of these texts in relation to the more widely known text - Danse, théâtre et spectacle (...) vivant – GALERIE – Nouvel article. (shrink)

This article presents a novel control approach, hybrid neuro-fuzzy, for the load frequency control of a four-area interconnected power system. The advantage of this controller is that it can handle nonlinearities, and at the same time, it is faster than other existing controllers. The effectiveness of the proposed controller in increasing the damping of local and inter-area modes of oscillation is demonstrated in a four-area interconnected power system. Areas 1 and 2 consist of a thermal reheat power plant, whereas Areas (...) 3 and 4 consist of a hydropower plant. Performance evaluation is carried out by using fuzzy, artificial neural network, adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system, and conventional proportional and integral control approaches. Four different models with different controllers are developed and simulated, and performance evaluations are carried out with said controllers. The result shows that the intelligent HNF controller has improved dynamic response and is at the same time faster than ANN, fuzzy, and conventional PI controllers. (shrink)

Presidential addresses delivered at various annual sessions of the Akhila Bhāratīya Darśana-Parishad.

This article shows how the construction of transnational migrant communities across international borders poses a challenge to the assumed "natural" isomorphism of space, nations, and cultures that typically exists in theories of cultural and cross-cultural psychology. One of the principal aims of this article is to add to the critical impulse that initially defined the vision of cultural psychology by analyzing how transnational diaspora communities have become new sites for the rethinking of core concepts such as culture, self, nation and (...) identity. By drawing on Gupta and Ferguson's work, I present three important ways through which cultural theorizing can be reconfigured in the present transnational context. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

This article suggests that Tagore’s conception of cosmopolitan education can provide the basis for advancing matters of global social justice, when considering the problem posed by Nancy Fraser in her essay ‘Reframing Justice in a Globalizing World’: ‘How can we integrate struggles against maldistribution, misrecognition and misrepresentation within a post-Westphalian frame?’. To this end, the article briefly reflects on the perspective of cosmopolitanism, setting the scene for an exploration of Tagore’s distinctive cosmopolitan educational philosophy. The article develops the argument that (...) framing pedagogy centred on Tagore’s principles of cosmopolitan education to produce cosmopolitan-minded citizens can help bring about social, political, and economic change at local, national, and international level, in order to integrate the three-dimensional struggle for social justice outlined by Fraser. The article concludes by suggesting what can be done at the institutional and curriculum levels to help foster the cosmopolitan attitude. (shrink)

Documenting how the Japanese state responded to increasing social discontent during initiation of unpopular welfare reforms, this study examines the factors that hindered the political empowerment of civil society despite the timely introduction of participatory policymaking institutions. The Japanese government opted in the early 2000s to introduce a participatory method to initiate the unpopular pension reform. Deliberation councils were established to encourage open discussions among government policymakers and committee members, including citizen representatives. The final outcomes of the deliberations, however, were (...) mostly about parametric adjustments and did not adequately consider the urgent demand of the general public. The participatory measure did not significantly improve the public's trust in the pension programs, but it did justify the government's reform initiatives. The welfare bureaucracy that set the goal, defined the scope of the agenda, and steered the discussions toward technical issues structurally restricted the voices of the citizen members in the deliberation councils. The lack of citizen advocacy groups, which could otherwise have effectively supported the citizen members on the committee, contributed to the limited roles and influences of the citizens. It is argued that the traditional conservative corporatism of Japan was reinforced during this time period, despite the introduction of the idea of participatory governance. (shrink)

Successfully creating polarizing narratives, several populist leaders have come to dominate the global political sphere in recent times. However, the coronavirus pandemic has raised serious questions over their ability to respond to its challenges effectively. Whether they will remain in power after the pandemic is an intriguing question. The key to understanding the dynamics of power among populist leaders lies in analyzing the tactics they employ for the appropriation of political power. In this context, reading Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great (...) (1587) can play an important role. This essay, therefore, argues that through a unique characterization of Tamburlaine the Great, Marlowe critiques Queen Elizabeth’s aggressive political maneuvers of improvisation, which enabled her to reinforce her divine claim over the throne of England. Yet striking historical and literary references suggest that Queen Elizabeth and Marlowe’s Tamburlaine attempted to achieve improvisation through similar means but in the end encountered the transience and limits of their temporal powers, while facing the biological realities of barrenness and heredity – a fact that should serve as a warning to the current populist leaders across the world. (shrink)

Blending classic wisdom with over 100 pop culture references, Singh whimsically switches the lens in this book from the traditional society teaching math to a new and bold math teaching society. With charming buoyancy and intimacy, he takes us on an emotional and surprising journey through the deepest goldmine of mathematics—our personal happiness.

Can strikes by resident doctors training to become consultants in Indian public-sector teaching hospitals be ethical? These hospitals were established for the medical care of the very poor in a country where health insurance and a national health service are nonexistent. In such a situation, the paralysis of tertiary healthcare centers by striking doctors runs contrary to the raison d'être of the profession. It also violates the first dictum of medicine: Primum,nonnocere. And although there is some discussion in the Western (...) literature on strikes by doctors, authorities in India are silent on the subject. (shrink)

This paper advances a Millian concept of care by re-evaluating his defense of the “common arrangement,” or a gendered division of labor in marriage, in connection with his views about traditionally feminine capacities, time use, and societal expectations. Informed by contemporary care ethics and liberal feminism, I explicate the best argument Mill could have provided in defense of the common arrangement, and I show that it is grounded in a valuable concept of care for care-givers. This dual-sided concept of care (...) theorizes care-giving both as a domain of human excellence and as labor with accompanying burdens. Liberal feminists should adopt this Millian concept of care, which can then inform principled thinking about distributive arrangements. (shrink)

This essay responds to Jan Narveson’s libertarian commentary on my earlier work “Liberal Dependency Care.” There, I argued that the underlying logic of the circumstances of justice warrants adding care to a liberal theory of justice. In this essay, I rebut Narveson’s skeptical claims about the liberal credentials of my justificatory argument by identifying the extent to which my view shares the same reasonable constraints on liberty as those defended by John Stuart Mill. I also suggest that a libertarian refusal (...) to add care to the core functions of the state is plausible only if women’s labor remains invisible. Finally, I refute Narveson’s contention that my strong procedural principle of care provision is incipiently totalitarian. The case for public support to teach basic levels of attentiveness and responsiveness is analogous to the case for teaching the foundational skills of arithmetic, which are legitimately taught in primary and secondary schools. (shrink)

This article examines the work of internet activist and artist Paolo Cirio, whose practice intersects with matters of copyright, privacy, transparency and corporate finance. His project Loophole for All, for example, exposes the practice of tax evasion in the Cayman Islands by counterfeiting Certificate of Incorporation documents. An important aspect of Cirio’s work is how he names himself in the process. Placed within our contemporary ‘data turn’, his work is framed critically in this article in terms of a ‘new structuralist’ (...) account of culture and society. The article attends to the view that power increasingly comes through the algorithm, but argues that we risk reifying so-called generative rules, which may simply be algorithms out of sight. Cirio’s art practice helps focus on what it means to make a critique of contemporary and ubiquitous algorithm structures. As part of this, the article considers how ‘anonymity’ underlies subversive art practices of the 20th century and contemporary protest groups, but that this anonymity arguably undermines attempts to effect change. (shrink)

The value of autonomy is a hallmark of liberal doctrine. It would seem to follow that liberals must reject the practice of “arranged marriage” on the grounds that the “arranging” component of the practice eschews autonomy and individuality. However, in policy debates in Great Britain, the difference between “arranged marriage” and “forced marriage” has been defined as the presence of autonomy or free choice for an arranged marriage and their absence in cases of forced marriage. A paradox seems to result: (...) arranged marriage is defined as a marriage practice that both rejects autonomy and requires autonomy. In this article, I will show that the resultant paradox arises from the inadequacy of the autonomy analysis rather than from any intrinsically puzzling feature of arranged marriage. I then offer an alternative normative framework to assess arranged marriage’s potential contribution to a just society. My tri-metric analysis for arranged marriage includes the autonomy of the participants (Metric 1), as well as two societal metrics: the fairness of the distribution of care-giving labor (Metric 2) and the degree to which the society meets its members’ legitimate needs for care (Metric 3). (shrink)

ABSTRACT At first glance, a military life and practising Buddhism may seem like two pursuits at odds. Buddhism sets the moral bar very high and nowhere in its teachings can one find any evidence in support of violence, whether in word, thought or deed. One could therefore argue that Buddhism and the military are two strange bedfellows, and some may find it difficult to conceive of serving in the military whilst adhering to the ethos, values and standards of Buddhism. This (...) article challenges this popular myth and resolves this apparent paradox between Buddhism and the military. By drawing on canonical Buddhist teachings as well as voices from the Sangha and Buddhist military practitioners, we demystify the ‘Buddhist soldier’ and clear common misconceptions regarding: the fundamental teachings of ahiṃsā, karma and skilful (kusala) action; Buddhist teachings being equated to pacifism; the duty of soldiers and the State to protect; soldiering as a ‘right livelihood’; and the karmic implications of military professions. Using international humanitarian law, the body of law regulating the conduct of war, as a natural reference point, we explore what guidance Buddhist teachings provide to soldiers and how they potentially can contribute towards reducing suffering in war, including through application in military training. Buddhism endorses the concept of maintaining disciplined, virtuous and skilled military forces to protect what is good. At all times one needs to aim at not causing suffering to others, but never at the expense of preventing even worse suffering. (shrink)

The nature and relationships between Law and State -- Law making, its sources and the role of State -- Law, legal systems, and legal families : synchronizing in the Globalized World -- Fundamental legal concepts : the distinctive features of law -- Constitutional law : the Supreme Law of the land -- Criminal law : State's authority in defining and penalizing crimes -- Torts : making people responsible & civilized -- Civil law and proceedings : public and private law -- (...) Law for doing business : the role of state and market -- Justice : the goal of political society -- The Rule of Law : foundation of modern political society -- Human rights and the state : grounds for personal and institutional relationships -- International trade : the centerpiece of growth and international relations -- Law, Globalization and international relations. (shrink)