The lack of academic religious studies in India has several causes: the choice of the secular University of London as model for the first universities in India in 1857, the secular constitution, the secularist approach of the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the explosive relation between major faith traditions. However, with the waning of the Indian secularist framework and the continued power and influence of Hindutva ideology, there is a need to discuss different models for religious studies (...) in India. In this article, the point of departure is Banaras Hindu University, one of the few universities in India that has religious studies, but also a faculty of Hindu theology. The focus is on the history of BHU and the recommendations of several educational commission from the 1930s to the 60s, with a note on recent attempts at BHU of renewing value education. The aim is to highlight one alternative for developing religious studies in India, whose primary goal is the formation of good citizens enabled by a set of universal human values instantiated in local traditions. (shrink)

In this monograph a fundamental distinction is made between law and juridical thinking. Law is the content of legal rules and the systems of legal rules. Juridical thinking is the handling of the law by the lawyers. To this distinction corresponds a basic distinction between the language of law and the language of juridical thinking, and correlatively, between L-concepts and J-concepts. The monograph is devoted to the J-concepts, especially of technical J-concepts. Four kinds of J-concepts are investigated: morphological J-concepts, those (...) that help us to structure the law in a logical and functional way; topological J-concepts, those that help us to indicate the phenomena to which the law is applicable, and to separate the areas of application for different legal systems; praxeological J-concepts, those that help us to explore the relations between law and action, and methodological J-concepts, those that help us to describe the methods of the professional-juridical handling of the law. The work can be characterised as presenting a lawyer ́s philosophy of law. (shrink)

In this book the author investigates what is common to the German idea of the Rechtsstaat and the Anglo-American idea of the Rule of Law. He argues that, although dressed up in rather different garb, these two concepts are in fact based on the same fundamental idea and stand for the same values ("the law-state values") - all ideas that are in the European tradition older than their British and German variants. The fundamental idea is that the individual shall enjoy (...) legal protection against infringements brought about by the exercise of power on the part of the state. In the book basic concepts such as legality, legal equality, legal certainty, legal accessibility and legal security are investigated. Also explored are their mutual relations, in particular, conflicts between them. Furthermore, the book offers practical advice on realising and sustaining these values in practice. Finally, it is argued that the characteristic law-state values can only be justified by reference to an even more fundamental humanistic idea, namely, what the author calls "a life of human dignity".. (shrink)

Description: Suddhadvaita or the system of Pure Monism of Sri Vallabhacarya claims to be the most faithful and authentic exposition of the real teachings of the Upanisads as it purifies the Non-Dual Ultimate Reality of the extraneous concept of Maya introduced by Samkara under the influence of Buddhism. In this system we have the concept of Non-Dualism or Advaita in its pristine, Upanisadic sense unblemished by Samkara's Illusionism, the concept of a Concrete, Personal and determinate Ultimate Reality. In recent years (...) many important works expounding the philosophy of Sri Vallabhacarya have been published but none of them have endeavoured a problem-wise study of this system which is essential for its proper understanding vis-a-vis the claims of other Vaisnavite schools. This book attempts to supplement this want by under-taking a problem-wise exposition of the philosophy of Sri Vallabha and his followers incorporating the views and solutions of other schools as well. Vallabhism as a philosophico-religious creed of Vaisnavism has the distinction of putting forward a novel creed and theory of Bhakti known as Pusti-bhakti which acquires a central place in the Suddhadvaita system. The author has, therefore, discussed it, at length, to distinguish it from other forms of Bhakti propagated in other schools of Vaisnavism. The author has, in this study, based himself only on Samskrta sources providing the reader with an outline of the basic philosophical and religious theories and concepts of Sri Vallabhacarya and his followers. (shrink)

Supercommentary on Gauḍabrahmānandī of Brahmānandasarasvatī, 17th cent., commentary on Advaitabrahmasiddhi of Madhūsudana Sarasvatī, work on Advaita philosophy ; includes complete text of Advaitabrahmasiddhi and Gauḍabrahmānandī.

Contributed seminar papers on perception and verbal testimony in Indian philosophy presented at the national seminar during 16-17 January 2012.

The adoption of web-based telecare services has raised multifarious ethical concerns, but a traditional principle-based approach provides limited insight into how these concerns might be addressed and what, if anything, makes them problematic. We take an alternative approach, diagnosing some of the main concerns as arising from a core phenomenon of shifting trust relations that come about when the physician plays a less central role in the delivery of care, and new actors and entities are introduced. Correspondingly, we propose an (...) applied ethics of trust based on the idea that patients should be provided with good reasons to trust telecare services, which we call sound trust. On the basis of this approach, we propose several concrete strategies for safeguarding sound trust in telecare. (shrink)

Classical commentary on Nyayasūtra of Gautama.

During the past few decades, a radical shift has occurred in how philosophers conceive of the relation between science and philosophy. A great number of analytic philosophers have adopted what is commonly called a ‘naturalistic’ approach, arguing that their inquiries ought to be in some sense continuous with science. Where early analytic philosophers often relied on a sharp distinction between science and philosophy—the former an empirical discipline concerned with fact, the latter an a priori discipline concerned with meaning—philosophers today largely (...) follow Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) in his seminal rejection of this distinction. -/- This book offers a comprehensive study of Quine’s naturalism. Building on Quine’s published corpus as well as thousands of unpublished letters, notes, lectures, papers, proposals, and annotations from the Quine archives, this book aims to reconstruct both the nature (chapters 2-4) and the development (chapter 5-7) of his naturalism. As such, this book aims to contribute to the rapidly developing historiography of analytic philosophy, and to provide a better, historically informed, understanding of what is philosophically at stake in the contemporary naturalistic turn. (shrink)

Commentary on Brahmasūtra of Bādarāyana, basic work on the fundamentals of Vedanta philosophy.

Sankhya philosophy as described in Mahābhārata, Hindu epic; a study.

For the 17 centuries since Hippocrates called for “the most desperate remedies in desperate cases,” physicians have adhered steadfastly to two cooperative goals: to prolong life and to relieve suffering. ut during the past 50 years, mechanical interventions at the edge of life have thrown those aims into dramatic conflict. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation, mechanical ventilation, feeding tubes, and the intensive care unit have postponed physiologic death for many patients who are anencephalic, comatose, or in a persistent vegetative state or prefer death (...) to a life of suffering and pain. Demands from patients' families and cries for social justice have compelled physicians, hospital personnel, and the Supreme Court to analyze concepts long reserved for university philosophers. Although decisions are made daily to withhold and withdraw life support, society is gradually agreeing upon an ethical framework that balances hopeful science with dignified death. This article outlines that ethical framework, reviews recent legal precedents, and suggests practical guidelines for their application. (shrink)

In this paper we present a new proposal for defining actual causation, i.e., the problem of deciding if one event caused another. We do so within the popular counterfactual tradition initiated by Lewis, which is characterised by attributing a fundamental role to counterfactual dependence. Unlike the currently prominent definitions, our approach proceeds from the ground up: we start from basic principles, and construct a definition of causation that satisfies them. We define the concepts of counterfactual dependence and production, and put (...) forward principles such that dependence is an unnecessary but sufficient condition for causation, whereas production is an insufficient but necessary condition. The resulting definition of causation is a suitable compromise between dependence and production. Every principle is introduced by means of a paradigmatic example of causation. We illustrate some of the benefits of our approach with two examples that have spelled trouble for other accounts. We make all of this formally precise using structural equations, which we extend with a timing over all events. (shrink)

Supercommentary on Brahmasūtra of Bādarāyaṇa, aphoristic work on Vedanta philosophy and commentary on Vedāntapārijātasaurabha of Nimbārka and Vedāntakaustubha of Śrīnivāsācārya, disciple of Nimbārka; includes Hindi translation; includes Yamunastotra of Keśavakāśmīri Bhaṭṭācārya and study on the doctrines and religious leaders of Nimbarka Sect.

Comparative study of Nyaya and Vaiśeshika systems of Hindu philosophy.

Disruptions in theory of mind faculties and the ability to relate to an intersubjective reality are widely thought to be crucial to schizophrenic symptomology. This paper applies a cognitive linguistic framework to analyze spontaneous perspective-taking in two corpora of stories told by people with a schizophrenia diagnosis. We elicited natural narrative language use through life story interviews and a guided storytelling task and analyzed the linguistic construal of viewpoint in these stories. For this analysis, we developed a reliable and widely (...) applicable viewpoint model that allows for the categorization and quantification of speakers’ linguistic presentation and navigation of spatiotemporal domains. We found that our participants skillfully presented, navigated and embedded different narrative viewpoints through a variety of linguistic viewpoint devices. They presented complex viewpoints of other people in both the here-and-now of the interaction and the there-and-then of a narrative, and made use of transition markers to demarcate spatiotemporal discourse domains. We found no differences in viewpoint variables when comparing their guided stories to a control group. If problems with intersubjectivity are indeed an essential part of schizophrenia, an explanation of how this group can take on and navigate complex linguistic viewpoints in natural narrative interaction is called for. (shrink)

Theoretical methods for empirical state determination of entangled two-level systems are analyzed in relation to information theory. We show that hidden variable theories would lead to a Shannon index of correlation between the entangled subsystems which is larger than that predicted by quantum mechanics. Canonical representations which have maximal correlations are treated by the use of Schmidt and Hilbert-Schmidt decomposition of the entangled states, including especially the Bohm singlet state and the GHZ entangled states. We show that quantum mechanics does (...) not violate locality, but does violate realism. (shrink)

Expressive-Assertivism, a metaethical theory championed by Daniel Boisvert, is sometimes considered to be a particularly promising form of hybrid expressivism. One of the main virtues of Expressive-Assertivism is that it seems to offer a simple solution to the Frege-Geach problem. I argue, in contrast, that Expressive-Assertivism faces much the same challenges as pure expressivism.

Lindquist et al. convincingly argue that the brain implements psychological operations that are constitutive of emotion rather than modules subserving discrete emotions. However, thenatureof such psychological operations is open to debate. I argue that considering appraisal theories may provide alternative interpretations of the neuroimaging data with respect to the psychological operations involved.

I try in this essay to accomplish two things. First I offer some first thoughts toward a clarification of the ethical foundations of private property rights that avoids pitfalls common to more strictly Lockean theories, and is thus better prepared to address arguments posed by critics of standard private property arrangements. Second, I'll address one critical argument that has become pretty common over the years. While versions of the argument can be traced back at least to Pierre Joseph Proudhon, I'll (...) focus on a formulation given it by Jeremy Waldron. The basic idea is that the only sound arguments for private property rights lead to the conclusion that society has an obligation to insure that every citizen possess private property. In Waldron's formulation, what is justifiable is a general, rather than a special, right to private property. I shall try to suggest that this conclusion is unwarranted. (shrink)

Pearl opened the door to formally defining actual causation using causal models. His approach rests on two strategies: first, capturing the widespread intuition that X = x causes Y = y iff X = x is a Necessary Element of a Sufficient Set for Y = y, and second, showing that his definition gives intuitive answers on a wide set of problem cases. This inspired dozens of variations of his definition of actual causation, the most prominent of which are due (...) to Halpern & Pearl. Yet all of them ignore Pearl’s first strategy, and the second strategy taken by itself is unable to deliver a consensus. This paper offers a way out by going back to the first strategy: it offers six formal definitions of causal sufficiency and two interpretations of necessity. Combining the two gives twelve new definitions of actual causation. Several interesting results about these definitions and their relation to the various Halpern & Pearl definitions are presented. Afterwards the second strategy is evaluated as well. In order to maximize neutrality, the paper relies mostly on the examples and intuitions of Halpern & Pearl. One definition comes out as being superior to all others, and is therefore suggested as a new definition of actual causation. (shrink)