Femicide is an ongoing public health and human rights crisis of global proportions. Currently, however, there is a relative vacuum of ethics theory and discussion about femicide amongst the health professions. This article draws from three illustrative case examples along the continuum of femicide to explore contemporary ethical concerns relevant to addressing gender-based violence and death through clinical medicine and public health. Using an epistemic justice framework, we analyze the relative invisibility of femicide in public health discourse today, and renew (...) a conversation about ethical issues inherent to health interventions and policy-making around femicide. (shrink)

In this book, eleven leading theorists debate the normative challenges of preventive war through the lens of important public and political issues of war and peace in the twenty-first century. Their discussion covers complex and topical subjects including terrorism, the 'Bush doctrine' and the invasion of Iraq, Iran's nuclear capabilities, superpower unilateralism and international war tribunals. They examine the moral conundrum of preventive intervention and emphasize the need for a stronger and more effective international legal and political order and a (...) corresponding re-evaluation of the normative status of international law. Together their essays form a challenging and timely volume that will be of interest to scholars in ethics and political philosophy, political theory, international relations, international law and peace studies and to general readers interested in the broader issues of peace and justice in the new world order. (shrink)

The rapid development of CRISPR-based gene editing has been accompanied by a polarized governance debate about the status of CRISPR-edited crops as genetically modified organisms. This article argues that the polarization around the governance of gene editing partly reflects a failure of public engagement with the current state of research in genomics and postgenomics. CRISPR-based gene-editing technology has become embedded in a narrow narrative about the ease and precision of the technique that presents the gene as a stable object under (...) technological control. By tracing the considerably destabilized scientific understanding of the gene in genomics and postgenomics, this article highlights that this publicly mediated ontology strategically avoids positioning the “ease of CRISPR-based editing” in the wider context of the “complexity of the gene.” While this strategic narrowness of CRISPR narratives aims to create public support for gene-editing technologies, we argue that it stands in the way of socially desirable anticipatory governance and open public dialogue about societal promises and the unintended consequences of gene editing. In addressing the polarization surrounding CRISPR-based editing technology, the article emphasizes the need for engagement with the complex state of postgenomic science that avoids strategic simplifications of the scientific literature in promoting or opposing the commercial use of the gene-editing technology. (shrink)

The main focus of this essay is to closely engage with the role of scientist-subjectivity in the making of objectivity in Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison’s book Objectivity, and Daston’s later and earlier works On Scientific Observation and The Moral Economy of Science. I have posited four challenges to the neo-Kantian and Foucauldian constructions of the co-implication of psychology and epistemology presented in these texts. Firstly, following Jacques Lacan’s work, I have argued that the subject of science constituted by the (...) mode of modern science suffers from paranoia. It is not the fear of subjectivity interfering with objectivity but the impossibility of knowing the truth of the real that causes paranoia. Here, I have argued that it is not the ethos of objectivity that drives epistemology as Daston and Galison suggest, but the pathos of paranoia. The second challenge builds upon Kant’s own denial that the perfect correspondence between the human will and the moral law is possible. Kant himself thought that an ethical human act is impossible without the component of “pathology.” This questions Daston and Galison’s argument that there is always ethical imperative at the core of epistemic virtue. The third challenge contests the way Daston and Galison take appearance for being in their application of the Foucauldian concept of technologies of the self in modeling the master scientist-self. The fourth challenge questions the notion of the psychological and unconscious in the making of epistemology in Daston’s later and earlier work. Against this background, I aim to make a claim that understanding and disclosing “entities” in the scientific domain presupposes an understanding of “being” in general. My goal is to open up the discussion for an alternative conception of the scientist-subject and thereby an affective and existential formulation of science. (shrink)

Preventing sexual and gender-based violence—and mitigating its devastating impacts on individuals and societies—is a central challenge of public health. A Woman in Berlin is 34-year-old journalist Marta Hillers’s first-hand account of life during the 1945 Red Army occupation of Berlin at the conclusion of World War II, when Russian soldiers collectively raped 2 million German civilians. Reflecting upon Hillers’s testimony, I argue that historical narratives about large-scale acts of sexual and gender-based violence deserve a more central place in public health (...) discourse. I also question how the ethical challenges of memorializing and studying mass crimes might inform future public health efforts to advance gender equity and mitigate sexual violence globally. (shrink)

The knowledge that organizations possess, produce, and acquire adds to their strategic competency and intelligence. Organizations develop intelligence from practice and learning by doing. There is a definite relationship that exists between organizational learning and productivity that contributes to the development of organizational intelligence. Organizational intelligence is of difference kinds, but almost all of them develop from organizational actions and learning that includes but are not restricted to gaining market information, consumer interactions, business communications, creating new products and services, managing (...) actions, solving emerging problems, etc. Intelligence is the ability to comprehend things or immediate situations and act rationally and according to what the situation demands. In this paper, we examine on what respect organizational intelligence positively relates to organizational competency, and how intelligence help develop strategic competency which adds to their advantage and makes them more robust. We find using a theoretical model that the development of organizational intelligence confers competitive strength to an organization, and contributes to the overall development of higher productivity and organizational competence. (shrink)

Lectures delivered at the Sanskrit College, Calcutta, 1972.

Although the paradigm of problems and their solutions are vastly diverse in business organizations, yet this paper focuses on two specific but important issues relating employee empowerment to their efficiency that are tied to higher attrition rates in some companies that are of much concern to senior managements. The causes are modelled and explained. The causes often relate to faulty and inadequate employee empowerment and motivation systems in place. This paper attempts to address two unique problems associated with workforce learning (...) and organizational empowerment that could be solved using knowledge management approaches. These are: i. What causes high attrition and reduced performance? ii. What changes in organizational learning structures should be implemented to address these problems? A mathematical model has been designed based on which axiomatic inferences have been derived to explain the problems and seek strategic solutions for the same. Our findings suggest that organizations must do more to support and promote employee empowerment by looking categorically into the problem issues that affect overall organizational efficiency. We hope our model successfully helps to elucidate the problem explained insofar in this research by addressing the core issues that define such problem statements. Organizations should strive to develop strategic tools to handle problems of employee attrition that are often the result of lack of oversight, and implementation of poorly executed strategies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Decolonizing Universality:Postcolonial Theory and the Quandary of Ethical AgencyEsha Niyogi De (bio)Living in colonial India, the Bengali thinker and creative writer Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) often meditated on ways that "concord" (milan) and "harmony" (sāmanjasya) could be established between persons and cultures [BIC 450-51]. Noting that "ruptures in balance and harmony" (bhār sāmanjasyer abhāv) that once were more localized now affected the whole world, he maintained that these reinforced the (...) progressive message of the modern age that the local "problems of a people are a part and parcel of humankind's" (swajātir samasyā samasta mānusher samasyār antargata) [RC 279]. In his view, the means to reestablish harmony in this unequal world lay in social practices and ideas conducing "freedom" (mukti) rather than enforcing "power" (shakti) and "coercive discipline" (shāsan) [SaS 408-09]. He argued that such progressive trends of practice and thought would be found not in one culture alone but through traveling across different cultural "seas of knowledge (jnān)" [SwSm 699]. For only through such conceptual journeys would we enkindle in ourselves "arguments with and doubts about" (yukti tarka o sandeher udbhav) our own cultures, and also learn from all the "voyagers in the path of progress" (unnatipather yātri) who emerge in different locations and times [SJ 39-40].As these comments reveal, Rabindranath maintained that inequalities could be rectified by making individual and collective norms and actions accountable to and measurable in terms of a speculative notion of universal humanity. While alert to the injustices proliferating from European colonization, he insisted that coercive practices and imbalances of power could not be entirely localized, and that in order to correct multiple forms of coercion we must seek across cultures and societies for (partial) achievements of human freedom and harmony. In so viewing transcultural negotiations of a common humane proclivity as the means to decolonize the world, Rabindranath did not stand alone but in a diverse company of anti-imperialist thinkers who adapted modern humanism to their ends: W. E. B. Dubois—who lauded Rabindranath's appropriation of [End Page 42] such liberal notions as democracy and equal opportunity "for greater ends" than were allowed by the "inconsistencies" of a racist European perspective [74]—Frantz Fanon, Jean-Paul Sartre, and from Rabindranath's own colonial context, the Bengali Anarchist poet Kazi Nazrul Islam (to name but a few). Reflecting upon worldwide experiences of subjection, these radical modern intellectuals tried above all to avoid reinventing separatism by declaring non-Western cultures to be unilaterally superior to Western imperialist culture. Driven by an activist ethics, they attempted instead to correct the roots of separatism through objectively evaluating, against a common frame of reference, right and wrong, relatively successful or failed practices of human empowerment and community.In this essay, I consider if and how we could characterize as "postcolonial" these evaluative ethics that rationally seek to correct coercive relations between persons and societies through referring to an affirmative idea of a human nature shared by all. If we take postcolonial agency to rest on a thorough critique of and resistance to all political and epistemic maneuvers that subordinate or exclude people and cultures, might this form of resistant agency reside in the ethical normativity of anti-imperialist humanism? This question elicits conflicting responses from contemporary postcolonial theorists.The argument, on the one hand, is that if postcolonial theory is to ethically address the multiple and interlocked hierarchies of a postimperial world, it indeed must take into account how people mobilize against separatism by working through critiques of ethnic divisiveness to negotiate a common human ground. Commenting on the universalism of thinkers such as Rabindranath Tagore and W. E. B. DuBois, Edward Said, for example, suggests that "vital" critiques of chauvinistic separatism arise only from viewing "local identity as not exhaustive" but as elaborating in reference to "larger, more generous realities of community between cultures, peoples, and societies" [Culture and Imperialism 217, 229]. His implication is that only through evaluating ourselves on the basis of a notion of noncoercive universality are we able to think against the identity politics that pervade our world, stemming at once from a nativist... (shrink)

Compliance is a key concept in health care and affects all areas of health care including diabetes. Non-compliance has previously been a label attached to many patients without much thought having been given to the causes of poor compliance. Over the last few decades there has been a large volume of research focusing on compliance that has exposed the multitude of factors affecting compliance. Even the definition is not clear cut and so comparability between studies is not without difficulties. A (...) better understanding of the factors affecting compliance, including the doctor/patient relationship, has allowed the evolution of “concordance”. Concordance views the patient as being the equal of the healthcare provider and as having a right to make informed decisions. In a condition such as diabetes, which has many potential long term complications, it is vital that concordance is embraced in the healthcare system in order to improve care. (shrink)

When I first started to think about the neural basis of aesthetic experiences in the late 1990s, little was written on the topic. Unlike other domains of psychology, such as attention, or perception, or memory, aesthetics had not gained purchase in cognitive neuroscience. In fact, aesthetics was barely visible in psychology itself despite being rooted in Fechner's writings over a hundred years earlier. In 1999, papers by Zeki (1999) and Ramachandran and Hirstein (1999) were initial forays into scientific aesthetics by (...) established neuroscientists. While undeniably important as initial markers for the field, their papers were but a first step. They were speculative and did not offer a framework for a systematic research program. Scholars in the humanities latched on to these initial papers, in ways that were detrimental to the field. For the most part, they ignored subsequent careful experimental work done by neuroscientists, as if neuroaesthetics began and ended in 1999 (Chatterjee, 2011). Missing in early discussions was a basic question: what would a framework that could guide experimental progress in the neuroscience of aesthetics entail? (shrink)

Description: The book is, so to say, a bouquet in two respects. It is, first, a presentation of academic tributes, in the form of a festschrift, to a well-known Indian philosopher Professor Margaret Chatterjee; and, second, a hand-picked collection of original essays of multifaceted reflection for serious students of philosophy. Areas of study covered are various-metaphilosophy, philosophy or religion, metaphysics, aesthetics, existentialism, and Indian and comparative philosophies; and so are the lands of the philosophers who have contributed to the (...) making of this volume: India, England, Greece, America, Canada, and Japan. The work is a signal product of international cooperation and philosophy-a cause which Professor Chatterjee has been actively pursuing for long and with great success. (shrink)

In this unique monograph, based on years of extensive work, Chatterjee presents the historical evolution of statistical thought from the perspective of various approaches to statistical induction. Developments in statistical concepts and theories are discussed alongside philosophical ideas on the ways we learn from experience.

The significance of and the role played by Knowledge Management (KM) is ever increasing in today's business and organizational decision-making environment. This paper attempts to underline the importance of organizing knowledge not for its own sake, but for its efficient use in organizational decision making. The tremendous explosion of knowledge resources, both electronic and conventional, within the last few decades calls for an understanding of how knowledge is organized for management of data and information. This is so for the reason (...) that they can be proficiently employed to create value and utility. This also calls for a search for 'relevance' in KM with regard to its situated nature in different contexts within which knowledge is situated, and that which nevertheless indirectly refers to its ontological scaffolding. We have devised two simple mathematical models of reference with regard to the design of the systems mostly intended for organizing knowledge in knowledge organizations for its most efficient utilization. The model specifies several unique scenarios aided by discovery of arguments related to its ontological framework within which knowledge is situated. Several contexts were drawn to draw inferences from the research study. The results bear relevance to knowledge managers who make important decisions for realization of organizational goals and objectives. (shrink)

The primary goal of this research is to search for relevance in social knowledge with respect to the role played by social information in economic modeling. Social information is derived from social processes. We attempt to explore how social concepts and principles find applications in science of economics and how they could be used more efficiently to model the behavior of economic agents. In attempting to do so, we try to elucidate what social knowledge is and what constitutes the body (...) of social information per se. With the growing importance of digital knowledge and information in the society, our analysis sheds light on the role played by social elements in economic theory and modeling that furnishes important data and information about various social processes which can no longer be ignored, despite the preponderance of scientific and technical knowledge in the society. We review, from the point of view of Kenneth Arrow's perception of social knowledge, how knowledge of social processes could be employed more efficiently in economic modeling in dealing with practical economic problems that have much relevance to economic processes. This research takes an aim at that direction by elucidating the concept of social knowledge in its present context--the digital age--with the aim of advancing knowledge in this field. Finally, the study also provides general knowledge about the subject of social knowledge in the context of economic growth. (shrink)

Margaret Chatterjee's new work Hinterlands and Horizons—a collection of nine phenomenological essays ranging across cultures and time periods—studies the historical and cultural evolution of the idea of amity and the concomitant concepts of fraternity, friendship, and tolerance. The work starts with the Enlightenment's idea of fraternity and its destruction during the fratricide of the French Terror. It includes chapters focusing upon the encounters between colonizers and missionaries, the impact of the Holocaust on the search for amity, the prospect for (...) amity in contemporary multiculturalism, and the potential of religion to deepen the experience of amity. An incisive interdisciplinary analysis of the bases of discord and harmony, of history and memory, Hinterlands and Horizons will be an enduring contribution to the history of ideas. (shrink)

The Aesthetic Brain takes the reader on a wide-ranging journey addressing fundamental questions about aesthetics and art. Using neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, Chatterjee shows how beauty, pleasure, and art are grounded biologically, and offers explanations for why beauty, pleasure, and art exist at all.

How can a manager or an organization refine and enrich its global mindset orientation? A radically different frame of aligning people, strategy and purpose may be through the extension and enrichment of a global mindset rather than strategy or structure. This article explores the concept of global mindset from a new perspective and forwards a number of specific action frames for managers to reflect on. The article contends that the negative effects of contemporary globalization can only be overcome through the (...) enrichment of global vision of managers everywhere. As for applicability, the article argues that mindset development can only contribute to the sustainability of organizations and societies. (shrink)

In this article I present a critique of the moral permissibility of preventive war. Preventive intervention is a murky issue in the just-war thinking, so just-war doctrine does not provide moral clarity in this debate. By invoking the concept of a just peace, I discuss prevention from a non-interventionist perspective and show how it can be an effective measure for national security and humanitarian policies. I draw on Amartya Sen’s idea of justice to reconstruct a justice-based, non-interventionist platform where, instead (...) of enabling the act of warfare, as is the case if we start from a just-war approach, we are encouraged to devise an option that would make the case for preventive war redundant. I claim that it is high time that we shift our discourse from finding security in resorting to a just war to building security via a just peace. (shrink)

The chapters in this volume deal with timely issues regarding democracy in theory and in practice in today's globalized world. Authored by leading political philosophers of our time, they appear here for the first time. The essays challenge and defend assumptions about the role of democracy as a viable political and legal institution in response to globalization, keeping in focus the role of rights at the normative foundations of democracy in a pluralistic world.

The object of this book is to provide a simple introduction to the Indian systems of philosophy. Each one of these systems has had a vast and varied development. An attempt has been made to introduce the reader to the spirit and outlook of Indian philosophy and help him to grasp thoroughly the central ideas rather than acquaint him with minute details. Modern students of philosophy feel many difficulties in understanding the Indian problems and theories. Their long experience with university (...) students has helped the authors to realise these, and they have tried to remove them as far as possible. This accounts for most of the critical discussions which could otherwise have been dispensed with. The book has been primarily written for beginners. The first chapter which contains the general principles and basic features of Indian philosophy, as well as a brief sketch of each system, gives the student a bird's-eye view of the entire field and prepares him for a more intensive study of the systems which are contained in the following chapters. It is hoped, therefore, that the book will suit the needs of university students at different stages, as well as of general readers interested in Indian Philosophy. (shrink)

Is there a corporate social work? Do business corporations as a part of their ‘social responsibility’ aim to socially empower the community by enhancing their basic ‘capability’ registers? While the newly acquired critical conscience has made social work ethics self-reflexive and thus interrogative about a lot of concept-metaphors taken for granted in traditional social work discourse, the language of ‘empowerment’ seems to have still bullied this apocalyptic, experimental eye. All the negative effects of power are lost in the blood of (...) positive nonchalance that seems to promise the granting of power to the people people’s empowerment)—as if. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) leading to social empowerment which we term as—Corporate Social Work (CSW)—thus is affirmed in more ways than one. This article—instead of an external (typical of the radical) disavowal—offers through a theoretical and an empirical problematic—an internal unpacking of the concept metaphor ‘empowerment’—where ‘empowerment’, ‘doing empowerment’ and ‘being empowered’ are demonstrated to be completely separate registers awaiting an ethical reckoning. Having completed this separation—however, the article proposes a discourse ethical monitoring of the capability approach where empowerment participates only as a (’three-way’) fractured phrase in dispute. (shrink)

Critiques of the ‘global’ have, in recent years, concerned the alleged implication of cultural dominance and secondly—and more philosophically—discerned therein foundationalism/essentialism. These charges will be examined. I next turn to the bearing of organizational/faculty matters on our theme, drawing on teaching experience in more than one country. The relocation of philosophy cannot but raise questions about how the subject itself is conceived. In the final section I suggest that the original humanist import of philosophical studies needs recovery, with ‘globality’ examined (...) critically not only over space but across time. This would involve not only due appreciation of argument (for no discipline lacks this) but of language, standpoint and attitude. (shrink)

Lecturers delivered by the author at Shimla in May 2004.

Abstract: The cosmopolitan ideal of liberal universalism seems to be at odds with liberalism's insistence on national borders for liberal democratic communities, creating disparate standards of distributive justice for insiders and outsiders. The liberal's dilemma on the question of cosmopolitan justice would seem to be an extension of this broader conundrum of conflicting loyalties of statism and globalism. The challenge for liberalism, then, seems to be to show how the practices of exclusive membership embody the principle of moral equality. While (...) discerning a variety of liberal reasons to give some scope to the claim that statism and globalism need not be an irreconcilable dilemma within liberalism, the essay argues that these reasons fail to provide a satisfactory resolution. Instead, the essay points out, global democracy can be the direction for both a statist and a cosmopolitan liberal, and the two camps a case not of conflicting loyalties but of multiple loyalties. (shrink)

The paper explores the fundamental thoughts of ancient India, specifically Vedic and Upanishadic ideologies, which believed that man has no authority to dominate the Earth at the expense of his/her benefits. Each and every one ought to protect, preserve, take care and show genuine concern for the Earth to whom he/she has ascribed divine motherhood. We shall also observe that western anthropocentrism is itself facing a great challenge, and as a consequence, a new shade of ethical consciousness coined as „environmental (...) ethics‟ has emerged. Environmental ethics mainly a non–anthropocentric ethics in its approach recognises that nature and her beings should not be exploited and dictated by man, since nature is thought to be an end in itself which should be treated with love, care and respect. One of the major off–shoots of this new shade of non–anthropocentric ecological ethics is deep–ecology which has unlike anthropocentric attitude, of the mainstream–European tradition ascribed intrinsic value to nature. Finally, the paper will try to arrive at a conclusion by making a critical yet comparative analysis, between the basic and positive observations of the Indian classical thought as well as central doctrines of deep ecology of Western environmental thought by relating both of them. Such an attempt intends to relate both of them by pointing out striking similarities between them, in spite of the difference in time and cultural milieu in which they emerged. (shrink)

This article presents some overlooked evidence on the reception of John Locke’s writings at Christ Church, Oxford. It is intended to supplement a new article in the History of Universities on the surprisingly positive response to Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) at that bastion of late seventeenth-century high churchmanship. This evidence sheds new light on: the reception of Epicureanism at that college in the 1650s; Locke’s personal connections at Christ Church; book-holdings of Locke’s writings at the early eighteenth-century college; (...) some unnoticed uses of Locke’s writings by members of Christ Church; the European and North American reception of one Christ Church Lockean; and, the changing trajectory of the later eighteenth-century reception of Locke at that college. (shrink)

In this paper, it is about the axiomatic basis of rational choice theory - the theory that is behind making rational choice and decisions. To make rational choices, we would require thinking rationally and understanding the reason and logic behind what makes a choice rational, and how we need to choose rationally. Decisions are made under various circumstances, i.e., under risk, and often under compulsion. In social choice theory, decisions are made by different types of decision making entities, i.e., committees, (...) groups, individuals and collective judgments by various types of organizations, etc. This paper highlights these issues and addresses the fundamental tenets of making rational choices by examining and following the previous workings of experts on this field. As such, it introduces a novel concept and the idea of Social Choice Rationality in choosing what’s rational. (shrink)

Analytical study of Advaita philosophy as propunded by Śaṅkarācārya in his commentaries on Upanishads, Brahmasūtra, and Bhagavadgītā known as Prasthānatrayī.

This is an introduction to philosophy but with a difference. Through out the book metaphysical issues are shown to be rooted in the history of philosophy. At the same time the author`s tratment of each issues leads right into the contemporary situation. Philosophy can scarcely be defined,the author says, but philosophizing can be `shown`. The various section of the book show in a fresh way what such philosophizing can be like.