Research has shown that gesture production supports learning across a number of tasks. It is unclear, however, whether gesture production during encoding can support narrative recall, who gesture production benefits most, and whether certain types of gestures are more beneficial than others. This study, therefore, investigated the effect of gesture production during the encoding of a narrative on subsequent narrative recall, and whether individuals’ levels of verbal and nonverbal memory moderated this effect. Additionally, this study investigated whether producing certain types (...) of gestures during encoding was more beneficial than others. Participants (N = 90, Mage = 20.43) read aloud a narrative while under instruction to produce gestures, under no specific instruction to produce gestures, or were required to keep their hands behind their back to prevent them from gesturing. Participants completed measures assessing verbal and nonverbal memory. While gesture production during encoding benefitted narrative recall (as measured through specific questions), verbal memory moderated the effect, such that gesture production was more beneficial for individuals with higher than lower verbal memory. Furthermore, producing representational gestures during encoding benefitted recall of points in the narrative at which those gestures were produced, while beat gestures had no effect. Findings have implications for understanding the mechanisms underlying the links between gesture and learning, as well as practical implications in instructional settings. (shrink)

The cultural heritage sites, incorporating advanced technology and engaging activities have been demonstrated to enhance visitor attention and retention, resulting in more significant and unforgettable experiences. The evolution of immersive technologies, has significantly transformed visitor engagement in cultural heritage sites. This study investigates how these technologies increase visitor experience and engagement. The study utilizes Chi-square tests and ANCOVA and multiple linear regressions tests to examine the correlation between technology usage and visitor satisfaction, to identify key predictors of enhanced visitor interaction. (...) The findings highlights the significant prospective of immersive technology enhances cultural heritage experiences, providing actionable insights for site managers and technology developers. The investigation highlights the renovate consequence of incorporating VR and AR technologies on visitor engagement at cultural heritage sites, enhancing satisfaction, and boosting return visits. It provides valuable recommendations for site managers and technology developers to enhance cultural heritage experiences. (shrink)

Leading cosmological theories engender a controversial puzzle which has prompted philosophers to propose competing epistemological solutions and physicists to propose methodological changes to cosmology. The puzzle arises from the prediction that every brain on Earth will eventually be vastly outnumbered by physical duplicates formed by random collisions of particles in outer space. Supposing that this prediction is correct, shouldn't you believe that your brain is probably one of these vastly more typical extraterrestrial brains, since you cannot infer your brain's origin (...) from your experiential state? But supposing that your brain is one of these extraterrestrial brains, why be confident in the cosmological theories, since you never actually received testimony supporting these theories? Proposals in the literature either deny the rationality of believing theories that make the prediction or deny the typicality of your brain among its duplicates. This paper argues that these proposals are not entirely satisfactory. Instead, one should be confident in theories making the prediction on the supposition that your brain is one of the extraterrestrial brains. The upshots include that it may be rational to believe that your brain is probably an extraterrestrial brain and that cosmologists should not alter their methodology in response to the puzzle. (shrink)

North American psychiatric literature describes the current method of psychiatric diagnostic assessment as "phenomenological"; however, it is unclear what phenomenology 1 means in this context. This paper investigates the meaning and impact of some of the major philosophical and psychiatric definitions of phenomenology on contemporary psychiatric assessment. Employing a comparative analysis of selected definitions of phenomenology, this paper argues that North American psychiatric assessment does not reflect any of these definitions of phenomenology. Instead, within the context of psychiatric assessment, phenomenology (...) has taken on an idiosyncratic, clinical meaning of signs and symptoms. However, this does not mean that phenomenology has had no impact on North American psychiatry. This paper contends that phenomenology has made contributions to psychiatry, particularly in the area of psychotherapy and especially in self-psychological psychotherapy. The importance of the concept of empathy within psychotherapy is evidence of the continuing influence of philosophical phenomenology on psychiatry. This paper concludes that phenomenology can provide an important complementary perspective to the dominant methods of North American psychiatric practice. (shrink)

Invoking metaphysical naturalness is “perhaps the most popular proposed solution” to the problem of grue (Hedden in Can J Philos 45:716–743, 2016). Accordingly, Bradley (Mind 129:179–203, 2020) develops a “Lewisian” method for constraining priors based on the syntactic simplicity of descriptions of possible worlds in a language whose predicates correspond to natural properties. The Lewisian method therefore requires a solution to the arguably unsolved problem of measuring syntactic simplicity. But this paper argues that _given_ a solution to this problem, there (...) is a better alternative to the Lewisian method: a novel “Neo-Carnapian” method for constraining priors based on the indistinguishability of experiences. (shrink)

The study aims to lay the groundwork for systematically investigating children’s peer discourse at different age levels with a view to delimiting the role of peer talk for pragmatic development. An interdisciplinary stance to the study of children’s peer talk is argued for, considering it simultaneously as the arena for the co-construction of childhood cultures as well as an arena for development. We propose a four-dimensional model of discursive events, meant to capture both dimensions simultaneously. The model takes into account (...) the dynamic interplay among the type of activity children are engaged in, the overall thematic frame of the event, its internal framing by the children themselves and the genre used. The model is applied to the analysis of natural peer talk at two age levels, preschoolers and fourth graders, focusing mainly on variation along the dimension of keying. The two age groups studied are shown to share a rich repertoire of keyings and genres, but to differ in their relative salience and modes of realization by age. Our analysis suggests that peer talk offers children ample opportunities to listen in, practice and display conversational as well as academic discursive skills, and hence may very well prove a crucial site for pragmatic development. (shrink)

We are grateful to Professor Robert Koons for his excellent, and generous, review (henceforth KR) of our book The Revision Theory of Truth (henceforth RTT). Koons provides in KR a welcome guide to our RTT, and he puts forward objections that deserve serious consideration. In this note we shall respond only to his principal objection.' This objection, which is developed on pp. 625 — 628 of KR, calls into question our main thesis. As we argue below, however, the objection is (...) not successful. We should forewarn the reader that this note is not self-contained. It presupposes familiarity with RTT (primarily, Chapter 4) and with KR. The main thesis of RTT is that truth is a circular concept. We argued that the Tarski biconditionals, read as partial definitions, constitute an intensionally adequate definition of truth. In other words, if T is a predicate defined by the Tarski-style infinitistic definition (I). (shrink)

Samatavilasa, The Radiant Sameness, shows the way of finding our fallen condition itself as redemptive. We are not merely to accept our pain and our mortal condition but to live these and become these. In becoming that pain lies our bliss, in living our mortality immortality. That alone is the highest bliss and absolute, that alone is salvation the final, this our becoming one with our mortal and absolutely tragic lot. That is what the state of samata, sameness, is. Only (...) that man is a mukta, a liberated soul, who can look alike on Maya and Brahman, on reality and appearance, on bondage and liberation, on life and death, on misery and joy. Not that there is an actual state called the state of liberation, an actual bliss that is absolute and highest, for terms like absolute and highest turn out to be relative, and, therefore, mis-leading. Hypostati-zation of samata would not work, for all hypo-statization is rooted in our narcissistic passion. Yet Samatavilasa would not, in actual fact does not, encourage us to look alike on these opposites constitutive of our mortal being as long as we fight a desperate fight against our inevitable and destined fate, fate the mortal; a stern discipline we have to undergo before we can even think of samata, sameness, not to speak of living it. For, not before dying unto himself can a man look alike on these dualities, the stuff our mortal life and being are made of. (shrink)

The epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and theology of Sankhya, one of the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy.

A first-hand biographical record, written by a disciple, presents the teachings and mystical experiences of Sri Ramakrishna, the 19th century guru who inspired a renewal of Hindu spirituality.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.1 (2002) 93-96 [Access article in PDF] Phenomenological Methods in Psychiatry:A Necessary First Step M. Gupta and L. Rex Kay Keywords: behavior, empathy, human science, methodology, natural science, phenomenology. WE ARE GRATEFUL to the journal for prviding the opportunity for exchange and discussion of some of the themes raised in our paper, "The impact of phenomenology on North American psychiatric assessment" and we are (...) pleased to be able to reply to the two excellent commentaries by McMillan and Morley. Both McMillan and Morley question the prospect of employing phenomenology and its methods in psychiatric assessment, and in psychiatric practice more generally. McMillan questions the utility of such a step, and Morley is pessimistic about its feasibility. We shall address each author's concerns in turn.Initially, let us restate the aims of our paper to contextualize our arguments and those made in the commentaries. First, we sought an understanding of what is meant by North American psychiatrists, working within the DSM framework, when they refer to the phenomenological approach to psychiatric assessment. To elucidate this meaning, we compared the contemporary North American usage to a small number of definitions of phenomenology, particularly those definitions that were, and are now, applied to clinical psychiatric work. Contrary to McMillan's suggestion, we did not intend to state definitively what should or should not count as phenomenological, but rather to compare North American psychiatric assessment to what typically has counted as phenomenological. Second, we sought to examine phenomenology's influence on North American psychiatric practice, particularly psychotherapy.Morley argues that such influences usually exemplify the inappropriate appending of phenomenology to psychiatric practice rather than true integration of different paradigms. Although we do not disagree with this general contention, we will argue that the deployment of phenomenological methods in psychiatric assessment is a necessary first step toward the kind of integration he proposes.McMillan makes two related but unintegrated points. First, he argues that objective, behavioral data are phenomenological, according to his broad definition of the term. Second, he proposes that, if the behavioral and the phenomenological are different, we are better off staying with the behavioral when it comes to psychiatric nosology. Let us consider these two points in succession.McMillan seeks to broaden Jasper's definition of phenomenology to include objective observations [End Page 93] as phenomenological. To this end, he distinguishes methods from aims. He summarizes Jasper's definition of phenomenology as "an empirical method for investigating 'individual psychic experience (p 55)" and claims that this is a statement of aim or objectives. He then urges us to "consider the merits of different phenomenological methodologies in terms of their success in achieving this objective" whether or not they utilize "all the methods" of phenomenology. This is much like saying that if we treat waving one's hand as a method for greeting someone, we are then free to treat the objective of the wave as one of greeting someone, and then say that anything that serves as a greeting is, by definition, a "wave." Whatever else McMillan's objective observations are, he has not convinced us that they are phenomenological, anymore than we are likely to convince you that a kiss on the lips is really just a wave.Nonetheless, it is worthwhile seeing what McMillan does with this argument. He tells us that we can "read the first-person experience from behavior in a fairly accurate and informative way." He uses the example of a father gazing at his young child and notes that it is not unreasonable to infer that he is experiencing loving and nurturing feelings. It is, indeed, not unreasonable to draw such an inference. But it is far more reasonable to infer that the father is experiencing a cacophony of feelings, including, but not limited to, love, concern, anxiety, pride, envy, hope, and sadness (Stern 1995, 18-58). If we are able to distinguish which of these feelings is dominant at any given moment—which we are—and if we are also able to track subtle shifts in such feelings... (shrink)

Rinard (2019) brings to our attention the fact that, typically, the questions What should I believe? and What should I do? are treated differently. A typical answer to the first question is Believe according to the evidence, and a typical answer to the second question is Do what is right. But Rinard rejects this dichotomy. In its place, she argues for a view which she calls “Equal Treatment” in which one should believe according to the same considerations that govern what (...) one should do. Christensen (forthcoming) aptly situates Equal Treatment as a limit case of a recent movement towards taking pragmatic factors as partly determining what one should believe, in that Equal Treatment is a purely pragmatic view. Does Rinard’s case for a purely pragmatic view succeed? This paper argues that the answer is no. Three objections that target key parts of Rinard’s case for Equal Treatment are presented. The upshot is that the dichotomy between the answers to What should I believe? and What should I do? seems robust against strong attempts to dismantle it. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The paper examines the ethical conception of the most well‐known and much discussed Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gītā, in the context of the Western distinction between duty ethics and virtue ethics. Most of the materials published on the Gītā make much of its conception of duty; however, there is no systematic investigation of the notion of virtue in the Gītā. The paper begins with a discussion of the fundamental characteristics of virtue ethics, before undertaking a discussion of the conceptions (...) of duty and virtue in the Gītā. The paper clearly demonstrates that (1) both duty and virtue coexist in the Gītā, and (2) the Gītā accords virtue an important place. (shrink)

This article uses critical discourse analysis to examine how the higher COVID-19 infection rates among South Asians in general, and Punjabis more specifically, have been represented by conservative politicians and their representatives as a consequence of cultural and religious practices. Two counter-narratives are discussed. The first substitutes the negative image of the Sikh Punjabi Canadian community with a celebratory and positive view of Sikh humanitarianism and community service. The second attributes the high numbers to class attributes such as precarious jobs, (...) poverty-level wages, employment insecurity, lack of sick days, over-crowded housing, racism and lack of access to healthcare. We argue that the conservative explanation as well as the first counter-narrative reveal continuities in culturalist understandings of South Asian immigrants, albeit in slightly different ways. The second counter-narrative represents a discursive resistance by advancing a structural analysis of health and disease in immigrant communities. (shrink)

Study of Sāṅkhyakārikā, classical treatise on Sankhya philosophy by Īśvarakr̥ṣṇa; includes text with English translation.

Business ethics is understood in a comprehensive and differentiated sense, as in recent years it has evolved under the influence of globalization. The present book examines inclusive growth, which includes more than just poverty alleviation and seeks to address the problem of equity through the enhancement of opportunities for all parties. This conforms to the fundamental task of business ethics, which is to enhance the ethical quality of decision-making and actions taken at all levels of business, id est, at the (...) personal (micro-), organizational (meso-), and systemic (macro-) levels and thus extending the narrow notion of business ethics as a niche for managers with good intentions. In the real world of competition and coordination, various situations produce various tradeoffs that the three pillars of the economy - Business, Government and Society - have to pursue for their survival and sustenance. In this book, we look into many such case studies in which the strength of one component leads to a benefit for one of the other components and a detriment for the other, thus causing an imbalance between the three pillars. This book will be equally valuable to students, philosophers, decision-makers in business and policy-makers at large. (shrink)

The international community has policy tools to influence business activity within and between nations, and to help ensure that globalization proceeds in a way that benefits all. This book aims at underlining the big-picture thinking on issues related to the roles that business can play in fostering an equitable and ecologically sustainable world.

The 'wall' that differentiates two different kinds of attitudes of the same person at different points of time denotes, as the author envisages, Conscious Attitudinal Infringement Area (CAIA), where moral dilemmas take birth to bridge the two different kinds of attitudes to give way to attitudinal interrelatedness. In order to 'reinforce' CAIA to narrow the gap between personal behaviour and public behaviour, lead a moral life and behave ethically in public, there has to be harmony between the inner life of (...) thoughts, feelings and emotions, and the circumstances and events in the person's outer environment. After discussing the corporate scenario in India in brief, the author has put forward a model called Action By Objectives (ABO) as the basis of the harmonization approach. Drawing inspiration from the ethical aspects of Buddhism, Sufism, Sikhism and Vedanta in this context, he suggests an abhyasa yoga (perfection through disciplined practice) menu for refining samskaras (inner predispositions) and reaching the ultimate level of positive, inspiring leadership. (shrink)

Some criticisms are offered of Barwise and Etchemendy's theory of truth, the principal one being that it violates a feature of truth called “supervenience”.

I discuss in this paper a criticism of modal logic due to Donald Davidson and John Wallace. They have claimed that, to quote Wallace, “modal predicate calculus does not provide a reasonable standpoint from which to interpret a language” (1970, p. 147). The aim of this paper is to present and evaluate their argument for this claim.

Medical migration appears to be an increasing global phenomenon, with complex contributing factors. Although it is acknowledged that such movements are inevitable, given the current globalized economy, the movement of health professionals from their country of training raises questions about equity of access and quality of care. Concerns arise if migration occurs from low- and middle-income countries to high-income countries. The actions of HICs receiving medical practitioners from LMICs are examined through the global justice theories of John Rawls and Immanuel (...) Kant. These theories were initially proposed by Pogge and Tan and, in this work, are extended to the issue of medical migration. Global justice theories propose that instead of looking at health needs and workforce issues within their national boundaries, HICs should be guided by principles of justice relevant to the needs of health systems on a global scale. Issues of individual justice are also considered within the framework of rights and social responsibilities of individual medical practitioners. Local and international policy changes are suggested based on both global justice theories and the ideals of individual justice. (shrink)

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic there was widespread concern that healthcare systems would be overwhelmed, and specifically, that there would be insufficient critical care capacity in terms of beds, ventilators or staff to care for patients. In the UK, this was avoided by a threefold approach involving widespread, rapid expansion of critical care capacity, reduction of healthcare demand from non-COVID-19 sources by temporarily pausing much of normal healthcare delivery, and by governmental and societal responses that reduced demand through national lockdown. (...) Despite high-level documents designed to help manage limited critical care capacity, none provided sufficient operational direction to enable use at the bedside in situations requiring triage. We present and describe the development of a structured process for fair allocation of critical care resources in the setting of insufficient capacity. The document combines a wide variety of factors known to impact on outcome from critical illness, integrated with broad-based clinical judgement to enable structured, explicit, transparent decision-making founded on robust ethical principles. It aims to improve communication and allocate resources fairly, while avoiding triage decisions based on a single disease, comorbidity, patient age or degree of frailty. It is designed to support and document decision-making. The document has not been needed to date, nor adopted as hospital policy. However, as the pandemic evolves, the resumption of necessary non-COVID-19 healthcare and economic activity mean capacity issues and the potential need for triage may yet return. The document is presented as a starting point for stakeholder feedback and discussion. (shrink)

New York based Families For Freedom is among a handful of organizations that directly organize deportees and their families. Analyzing the organization’s resignification of criminalized men of color as caregivers, I argue that current deportation policies and practices reorganize care work and kinship while tying gender and sexuality to national belonging. These policies and practices severely compromise the ability of migrant communities to socially reproduce themselves. Furthermore, the convergence of criminalization and immigration enforcement renders the kinship ties of deportable men (...) illegible, and justifies their separation from their loved ones. Since FFF publicly supports men with criminal convictions, it reveals that its members become targets of deportation precisely because they do not and cannot conform to heteronormative prescriptions. (shrink)

This collection of essays was compiled for the occasion of Nuel Belnap's 60th birthday.

The author was a Bengali officer of India's Foreign Service. On his first foreign assignment during 1948 - 1954, he came across rare manuscripts at the National Library in Bangkok covering Rabindranath Tagore's visit to Thailand in October 1927. Having learnt the Thai language and being a Tagore aficionado, this discovery was fortuitous. "As the Poet travelled mostly without a stenographer, a great many of his speeches would have been lost to posterity. Reports about the Siam visit available in India (...) then were extremely sketchy..... Besides the material on the Poets visit to Thailand, this book contains some other important documents not readily available. The main treatise is split into four chapters: Time to Awake: A Poets Warning, Tagores Conception of History, Message to Asia And Africa and The Toiler for Peace. These chapters show what Tagore considered to be the biggest problem of human history, how he warned humanity for more than half a century against the problems and perils into which the world has been thrown today, what remedies he suggested to counter them. The author also condensed the Poet's ideas about civilisation and culture, freedom, power, diplomacy, colonialism, military alliances, racial prejudice and nationalism." This book, when first published during the Poet's centenary celebrations in 1961, provided for the first time a full account of that visit. It has since been a reference source for many Indian and international scholars on Tagore, with citations in their publications. With increased attention in recent years to Tagore's views on Nationalism, a republication for wider availability would benefit both readers and scholars on Tagore's view of global events during the inter-War period. This is the only republication of the book after sixty years. (shrink)

Human development can be seen as the process of giving more effective expression to human values. Modern business philosophy has a certain viewpoint or perspective on human potential based on the secular humanistic values of the west and the scientific theories on the nature of man and his evolution. We are bound to welcome the New Paradigm in Business because it opens the path for a decisive step forward in evolution from an authoritarian, mechanistic, Taylorian era to a freer and (...) a more humanistic ethos in business. (shrink)