Farmer participatory approaches were used to identify problems and needs as perceived by local people and to develop strategies to achieve fodder security in south Indian villages. Indigenous knowledge systems as they relate to agroforestry were explored. The farmer participatory approaches have laid the foundations for selecting appropriate agroforestry technologies and developing suitable fodder security policy options. Potential benefits and risks as a result of implementing agroforestry projects were also discussed.

Emphasizes The Integration Aspects And The Spiritual Foundations Of Music.

Learning in college often extends beyond classrooms and formal instruction. Various forms of student organisings can allow for learning beyond institutional curricula. In this paper, using two examples of collective mobilisations, I argue for paying keener attention to the informal within formal education spaces. Both the instances under discussion occur around the space of the hostel - located within the formal educational institution and yet, away from the formalised processes of learning and teaching. In varied ways, however, the forms of (...) conversation that marks the coming together of students, has pedagogic significance. Specifically, conceiving students mobilising as an instance of anti-caste assertion or against implicitly accepted gender norms, I argue, provides students newer ways of thinking about the world - and must thus be conceptualised as learning. Not only are these informal learning spaces significant for the varied ways they could impact students; they are also important in holding the possibility to question hegemonic practices in educational institutions, and society at large. (shrink)

Research articles presented in various projects of Indian Council of Philosophical Research.

This paper attempts to give a critical appraisal of Professor Suresh Chandra’s views on Historiography of Civilization with reference to Dravidian Civilization. “Historiography of Indian Civilization: Harappans, Dravidians, Aryans and Gandhi’s freedom struggle” (published in JICPR June 1996) and “Demythologizing History: Dravidians in Relation to Harappans and the Aryans” (presented in the seminar on Dravidian Philosophy organized by Dravidian University, Kuppam) are the two significant works which are devoted to Historiography of civilization by Prof. Suresh Chandra. (...) This paper mainly confines to the first article since the second one, as the author himself stated, is an offshoot of the first. (shrink)

Philosophers have established that certain ethically important val- ues are modally robust in the sense that they systematically deliver correlative benefits across a range of counterfactual scenarios. In this paper, we contend that recourse – the systematic process of reversing unfavorable decisions by algorithms and bureaucracies across a range of counterfactual scenarios – is such a modally ro- bust good. In particular, we argue that two essential components of a good life – temporally extended agency and trust – are under- (...) written by recourse. We critique existing approaches to the conceptualization, op- erationalization and implementation of recourse. Based on these criticisms, we suggest a revised approach to recourse and give ex- amples of how it might be implemented – especially for those who are least well off. (shrink)

What are the distinctive psychological features that explain why humans are free, but many other creatures, such as simple animals, are not? It is natural to think that the answer has something to do with unique human capacities for decision-making. Philosophical discussions of how decision-making works, however, are tellingly incomplete. In particular, these discussions invariably presuppose an agent who has a mentally represented set of options already fully in hand. The emphasis is largely on the selective processes that identify the (...) options most worth doing and then execute them. But where do mentally represented sets of options come from in the first place? Once we focus on this constructive aspect of decision-making, an important fact becomes apparent: While the option sets of simpler animals are sharply limited, humans have a number of striking psychological powers—including remarkable powers of prospection and creativity—that enable them to construct option sets of unparalleled size and diversity. As a result, humans can express themselves in countless ways. This latitude for self-expression is, I argue, the distinctive feature that explains why humans are free. (shrink)

Philosophers routinely invoke self‐control in their theorizing, but major questions remain about what exactly self‐control is. I propose a componential account in which an exercise of self‐control is built out of something more fundamental: basic intrapsychic actions called cognitive control actions. Cognitive control regulates simple, brief states called response pulses that operate across diverse psychological systems (think of one's attention being grabbed by a salient object or one's mind being pulled to think about a certain topic). Self‐control ostensibly seems quite (...) different because it regulates complex, temporally extended states such as emotions and cravings. But critically, these complex states also exhibit important componential structure: They rely on response pulses as a key means by which they bring about action. The overall picture is that self‐control consists of skilled sequences of cognitive control directed against extended streams of response pulses that arise from states such as emotions and cravings, thus preventing these states from being effective in action. The account clarifies the “atoms” of self‐control—the elemental units that get combined in complex ways to produce different kinds of self‐control actions. Surprisingly, the account, which is derived from research in cognitive science, aligns nicely with the commonsense conception of self‐control. (shrink)

Gogineni, Babu Ravulapally village in Nalgonda District of Andhra Pradesh was enrolled in the 'Adopt a Dalit Village project' as it received generous support from the Council of Australian Humanist Societies in 2012.

Shows that executive integrity is not merely a moral trait but a dynamic process of making empathetic, responsible, and sound decisions. Describes key features of executive integrity including effective social interaction, open dialogue, and responsive leadershipand explains how integrity can be developed and practiced in today's organizations.

In this paper a theoretical framework is proposed for how the brain processes the information necessary for us to achieve the understanding of others that we experience in our social worlds. Our framework attempts to expand several previous approaches to more fully account for the various data on interpersonal understanding and to respond to theoretical critiques in this area. Specifically, we propose that social understanding must be achieved by at least two mechanisms in the brain that are capable of parallel (...) information processing. The first mechanism, based on research into mirror matching systems in the brain, suggests that representations of others are mapped onto an observer's representations of these same schemas in order to understand them. The second mechanism requires semantic analysis of a given social situation in order to understand the actions of others and most likely involves conscious processes. We suggest that experimental correlates of these systems should be dissociable using both behavioral and neuroimaging techniques. (shrink)

Die Wissenschaften entstehen und entfalten sich innerhalb von historischen Kontexten. Dabei vollzieht sich die Kontextualisierung einzelner Wissenschaftsdisziplinen durch die historisch-kontextuale Ausweitung und Abgrenzung gegenuber anderen Wissenschaftsdisziplinen. Die vorliegende Abhandlung ist ein Versuch, in der Entwicklungsgeschichte einiger fruhneuzeitlicher Wissenschaftsdisziplinen eine zweifache Wurzel der Kontextualitat festzustellen: Einen internen bzw. einen der Wissenschaftsdisziplin innewohnenden Prozess der Kontextualisierung kann man aus ihrer Entwicklungsgeschichte herleiten. Diesen gilt es von einem externen, durch aussere Faktoren und neue Erkenntnisse auf anderen Feldern bedingten Prozess der Kontextualisierung abzugrenzen. Aus (...) diesem kontextualen Wechselspiel heraus lassen sich etliche Paradigmenwechsel in der fruhen Neuzeit besser verstehen. Die Untersuchung geht von Fallstudien aus, wie sie in mechanischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften von Descartes, Kepler, Galilei, Newton, Hooke und Boyle zu finden sind. (shrink)

According to a standard picture of agency, a person’s actions always reflect what they most desire, and many theorists extend this model to mental illness. In this chapter, I pin down exactly where this “volitional” view goes wrong. The key is to recognize that human motivational architecture involves a regulatory control structure: we have both spontaneous states (e.g., automatically-elicited thoughts and action tendencies, etc.) as well as regulatory mechanisms that allow us to suppress or modulate these spontaneous states. Our regulatory (...) abilities, however, are bounded. Mental illnesses, I argue, arise precisely where these bounds are reached, thus allowing inappropriate spontaneous states to regularly manifest in thought and action. I conclude that the volitional view of mental illness is wrong: when a person with mental illness reaches the limits of control, what they do often does not reflect what they most prefer. (shrink)

According to Dewey, we are responsible for our conduct because it is “ourselves objectified in action”. This idea lies at the heart of an increasingly influential deep self approach to moral responsibility. Existing formulations of deep self views have two major problems: They are often underspecified, and they tend to understand the nature of the deep self in excessively rationalistic terms. Here I propose a new deep self theory of moral responsibility called the Self-Expression account that addresses these issues. The (...) account is composed of two parts. The first part answers the question, What is a deep self? Theorists have tended to favor cognitive views that understand the deep self in terms of rationally formed evaluative judgment. I propose instead a conative view that says one’s deep self consists of a distinctive kind of pro-attitude, cares, and I provide an account of cares in terms of their distinctive psychological functional role. The second part answers the question, When does an action express one’s deep self? I criticize the agentially demanding conditions set out in existing views and propose a more minimalist alternative. I show that the Self-Expression account handles issues that bedeviled traditional deep self views, including how to explain moral responsibility for spontaneous, out of character, and weak-willed actions. (shrink)