A case study in the kinds of problems to expect from this increasingly popular marketing tactic.

Trust is a central dimension in the relation between human beings and technologies. In many discourses about technology, the relation between human beings and technologies is conceptualized as an external relation: a relation between pre-given entities that can have an impact on each other but that do not mutually constitute each other. From this perspective, relations of trust can vary between _reliance_, as is present for instance in technological extensionism, and _suspicion_, as in various precautionary approaches in ethics that focus (...) on technological risks. Against these two interpretations of trust, this article develops a third one. Based on a more internal account of the relations between human beings and technologies, it becomes possible to see that every technological development puts at stake what it means to be a human being. Using technologies, then, implies trusting ourselves _to_ technologies. We argue that this does not imply an uncritical subjection to technology. Rather, recognizing that technologies help to constitute human subjectivity implies that human beings can get actively involved in processes of technological mediation. Trust then has the character of _confidence_: deliberately trusting oneself _to_ technology. (shrink)

On the life and philosophy of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on Christianity and comparing it with the views of Aurobindo Ghose, 1872-1950 on Vedanta; a study.

Background: Scholarly work is needed to develop the conceptual and theoretical understanding of trust to nursing practice. The transition from hospital care to complex pediatric homecare involves nurses in myriad roles, including management and care provision. Complex pediatric homecare transforms children, families, professionals, and communities, but its exact implications are unclear. Research objectives: To conduct an ethical inquiry into the role and responsibilities of nurses in the qualitative experience of adults involved in the hospital-to-home transition of young, ventilator-dependent children. Research (...) design: We followed methods described by Franco Carnevale. We used a sociologically grounded theoretical orientation—trust—to re-interpret qualitative data for an ethical inquiry into a specific facet of that data. Participants and study context: The participants included 26 adults, including 14 nurses, involved in the hospital-to-home transition in a Canadian province. Participants represented family, hospital, home, and government. Ethical considerations: The Conjoint Health Research Ethics Board at the University of Calgary approved this study. Findings: First, the concept and practice of trust was salient to the experience of transition. For example, responsibilities’ allocation between hospital-based professionals to mothers, home-based nurses, and non-professionals necessitated reliance and vulnerability. Second, the consequences of distrust connected to recognized challenges. For example, tensions along rural–urban, medical-family, and professional–personal divide each revealed suspicion and uncertainty that led to isolation and anxiety for all involved. Third, recommendations to improve the experience and mitigate the challenges of transition can be grounded in trust promotion. For example, transition-specific education programs and codes of ethics would promote openness, recognize mutual vulnerability, and advance trust in transition. Conclusions: The challenges to transition evidenced distrust, while trust represents a powerful tool to counter these challenges and their implications. A climate of trust could bridge divides between mothers and professionals; rural and urban professionals; and professionals with differing relationships with the family. (shrink)

While it is well-established that poverty and disease are intimately connected, the nature of this connection and the role of poverty in disease causation remains contested in scientific and social studies of disease. Using the case of HIV/AIDS in South Africa and drawing on a theoretically grounded analysis, this paper reconceptualises disease and poverty as ontologically entangled. In the context of the South African HIV epidemic, this rethinking of the poverty-disease dynamic enables an account of how social forces such as (...) poverty become embodied in the very substance of disease to produce ontologies of HIV/AIDS unique to South Africa. (shrink)

Contemporary consciousness studies, where it is not explicitly religious, is mostly physicalist. Theories of self and consciousness in classical Hindu thought can easily be seen to contribute to religious issues in consciousness studies. But it is also the case that there is much in that that can be useful within broadly physicalist parameters of study as well. The Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya schools, while having (nonphysicalist) soteriological goals for the metaphysical self, nonetheless provide theories of its relationship with consciousness that allow (...) for interpretative strategies that can make their theories relevant to a broadly physicalist study of consciousness. Advaita Vedānta cannot be so interpreted, but its inquiry into the nature of consciousness can provide material for a fundamental critique of the project of objectifying consciousness. (shrink)

Bruce Janz, Jessica Locke, and Cynthia Willett interact in this exchange with different aspects of Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad’s book Human Being, Bodily Being. Through “constructive inter-cultural thinking”, they seek to engage with Ram-Prasad’s “lower-case p” phenomenology, which exemplifies “how to think otherwise about the nature and role of bodiliness in human experience”. This exchange, which includes Ram-Prasad’s reply to their interventions, pushes the reader to reflect more about different aspects of bodiliness.

Many scholars and activists have argued that the International Criminal Court holds potential for advancing the rights of women and girls, leading to extensive feminist engagement with and investment in the Court. As the ICC enters its second decade of existence, this article offers a reflection on both the possibilities and the challenges facing feminists. Can the international criminal law really offer a site for enhancing the rights of women? And if so, how? To explore these questions I focus on (...) the interaction between feminist activism and international criminal law institutions in relation to crimes of sexual and gender-based violence. I argue that some of the feminist strategies deployed to get sexual violence onto the international agenda have resulted in perverse outcomes. This should lead us to greater critical reflection regarding how international law conceives of sexual violence and direct our future engagements with international legal institutions. In particular feminist activists and scholars need to move away from focusing on the number of prosecutions towards challenging the international criminal law to characterise the nature of the harm in accordance with a recognition of sexual rights. (shrink)

The COVID-19 vaccine has been a miraculous, life-saving advance, offering staggering efficacy in adults, and was developed with astonishing speed. The time from sequencing the virus to authorizing the first COVID-19 vaccine was so brisk even the optimists appear close-minded. Yet, simultaneously, United States’ COVID-19 vaccination roll-out and related policies have contained missed opportunities, errors, run counter to evidence-based medicine, and revealed limitations in the judgment of public policymakers. Misplaced utilization, contradictory messaging, and poor deployment in those who would benefit (...) most—the elderly and high-risk—alongside unrealistic messaging, exaggeration, and coercion in those who benefit least—young, healthy Americans—is at the heart. It is important to consider the history of COVID-19 vaccines to identify where we succeeded and where we failed, and the effects that these errors may have more broadly on vaccination hesitancy and routine childhood immunization programs in the decades to come. (shrink)

In recent years, political theorists have come to recognize the central role of affect in social and political life. A host of scholars, coming from a number of distinct traditions, have variously drawn our attention to the importance of the emotions to the tradition of the history of political thought, as well as to normative political theory. This attentiveness to affect is often cast as a break with earlier, Enlightenment-inspired liberal approaches towards politics, approaches that marginalized the emotions, dismissing the (...) passions as potentially dangerous, or neglected them altogether. According to the conventional liberal view, emotions are said to have no place in the public sphere, while proceduralist institutions abstract away from citizens’ affective attachments, now cast as private preferences of individuals qua citizens. In this paper we challenge this prevalent view. We argue that no less a liberal theorist than John Rawls is deeply attentive to the place of emotions in his account of liberalism. This may seem counterintuitive given that Rawls' work has been frequently criticized for epitomizing some of the deepest problems of contemporary liberal theory, as a result of the emphasis on rationalism and reasonableness in his account of liberal justice. However, against this prevalent reading, we demonstrate that Rawls is in fact highly concerned with the role of affect and presents us with an account of the embedded liberal subject. By drawing out these dimensions of Rawls' thought, we hope to contribute to upending the conventional view of liberalism as affect-blind in order to encourage a more nuanced reading of the liberal tradition. (shrink)

This article investigates the conceptual foundations of technological innovation and development projects that aim to bring ethical and social issues into the design stage. Focusing on the ethics and social impact of technological innovation and development has been somewhat of a trend lately, for instance in ELSA research and in such initiatives as the Dutch Responsible Innovation programme. I argue that in order to succeed in doing social responsible and ethical sound design, a proper understanding of the relation between technology (...) and society is required. I propose to move away from an externalist framework, in which technology and society are depicted as being defined independently, towards an interdependent framework, where technology and society are regarded to be mutually defining. This move is necessary in order for such innovation projects not to reinforce outdated concepts about technology, which in the longer run will prove counterproductive to the actual aims of the projects themselves. (shrink)

This paper speaks across the divide between feminist theorists and praxis-oriented gender experts to argue for a more enabling reading of postcolonial feminist critiques of gender and development. Drawing on the activism of Afro-Colombian women in the Pacific Lowlands of Colombia – most especially Matamba y Guasá, a network of black women's organizations from the state of Cauca – it brings attention to the independent ability of women in these locations to reflect and act on their own realities and claims.

Critical study of Svādvādamañjarī, verse work by Mallisena on Jaina philosophy.

This article presents material from my ethnographic study in Śringēri, south India, the site of a powerful 1200yearold Advaitic monastery that has been historically an interpreter of ancient Hindu moral treatises. A vibrant diverse local culture that provides plural sources of moral authority makes Sringeri a rich site for studying moral discourse. Through a study of two conversational narratives, this essay illustrates how the moral self is not an ossified product of written texts and codes, but is dynamic, gen dered, (...) and emergent, endowed with historical and political agency and an aesthetic capacity that mediates many normative sources to articulate "appropriate" conduct. In so doing, the essay shows the value of including oral narrative in ethical inquiry, especially in narrative ethics, which, for most part, has focused on written sources. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The current study is a qualitative investigation aimed at exploring the lived experiences of Tibetan youth who had escaped to India as unaccompanied minors and since then have been living as refugees in India without their parents. The study attempts to explore the challenges, struggles and coping of this unique population of youth refugees growing up in exile in India without the support of parents. Ten Tibetan refugee youth now studying at university level were interviewed in depth. Interpretative phenomenological (...) analysis was used to analyse their narratives. Major findings included the unique sociocultural, political and emotional challenges they faced related to acclimatisation, status of their own political identity, difficulties pertaining to retaining their Tibetan culture in a host country, and loneliness. Their adaptation in the host country was perceived to be facilitated by their unique Buddhist spiritual and cultural beliefs, strong faith in the Dalai Lama, community bonding and peer support and the use of social media to communicate with family in Tibet. The Tibetan refugee youth derived a sense of growth from their adversities related to appreciating the value of family, personal growth in the form of self-reliance, and finding meaning in life by feeling part of a larger purpose related to the Tibetan cause. Implications for practice: The study highlights the unique psychosocial issues of Tibetan refugee youth in exile in India. Culturally sensitive psychosocial support and an understanding of traditional spiritual and religious coping mechanisms may be integrated into health services for the Tibetan refugees who lack family support and may not be familiar with the Western constructs of mental health. (shrink)

One of the important aspects of educational philosophy is that it helps to construct a comprehensive system of education. During different periods, India has witnessed various stages of development. New priorities have emerged in education with the influences of monastic scholastic, realistic, idealistic and pragmatic trends. While education institutions have evolved, there remain several gaps between the philosophical ideals proposed by educational institutions and their everyday functioning. The paper brings forth the urgent need to bridge the gaps in order to (...) attain a comprehensive philosophy of education, in principle and in action. The authors posit that the Indian philosophy of education, normatively speaking, could extend the culture and tradition of the philosophical positions of Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda. Such an approach could help in developing an integrated approach of teachers towards education and assist in strengthening their role in shaping the inner potential of a learner in a constructive manner. (shrink)

In this study, 191 subjects, 93 male and 98 female undergraduate business students, were asked to respond to a 51 item questionnaire to examine their perception of what constituted a "just society". The subjects agreed on 16 characteristics which a just society would have. Out of 51 there were only 10 statements whereon average responses showed significant differences based on gender.

Since the early twentieth century, various strands of “anticolonial” scholarship have been and are concerned with how colonial encounters and practices constitute differences. In recent years, this scholarship maps the uneven implications of “coloniality” for subjects and bodies marked as different, for example, “feminine,” “raced,” “queer,” or trans. Along with feminism, anticolonial scholarship's analytical goals—to link the body with body politics—are closely tied to its political ones: to correct the wrongs of colonial encounters and practices. The current avatars of anticolonial (...) scholarship include postcolonial, decolonial, and settler-colonial variants. (shrink)

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is believed to be Beijing’s most ambitious project so far. Two types of apprehensions are often voiced to support this claim. First, it is widely argued that despite enjoying enduring strategic partnership for over five decades, Pakistan and China don’t match economically. The Chinese will get weary of the many challenges coming with the corrupt, inefficient and globally isolated Pakistan, seriously undermining the conclusion of the Chinese mammoth investment in CPEC Secondly, Pakistan’s prevailing environment of (...) insecurity which is rife with Islamic militancy and domestic insurgency is thought to be posing serious threats to the construction of the corridor. This paper aims to explain why, despite possible concerns, the China Pakistan economic corridor will succeed. (shrink)

The interpretive and subjective nature of qualitative research has led to growing utilization of arts-based strategies for data collection, analysis and dissemination. The defining characteristic of all such strategies is that they are largely subjective and intended to invoke personal responses in the ‘audience.’ Following that direction, many qualitative researchers are using metaphor to capture themes emerging from their analysis. In this article, we explore ethical aspects of using metaphor in describing results of qualitative health research and illustrate some of (...) the complexities using a case study of research conducted by one of the authors. Our analysis is designed to sensitize researchers and ethics reviewers to some unique ethical issues inherent to this approach towards data analysis and presentation. Issues related to participant dignity, respect and vulnerability led us to suggest that researchers should take these points into consideration in designing their research and seeking informed consent. Metaphors can be linguistic devices, but also conceptual aids that help develop patterns in analysis or that facilitate re-interpretation. However, there is a thin line between artistic licence for better expression and distorting the participants’ actual experience and meanings. Researchers, and reviewers, must be aware of the danger to participant dignity and integrity when aesthetics overshadow actuality. The use of metaphor may also trigger tensions between researchers and participants, especially if member checking is used. The implications of participant withdrawal must be considered and conveyed to ethics reviewers and participants. It is important to have a plan in place for dealing with some of these issues. These should be detailed in the proposal and communicated to participants. Institutional research ethics boards should, on their part, be prepared to ask questions if such details are lacking in the proposal. (shrink)

The target article, which is part of a larger study, the International Sexuality Description Project (ISDP), seeks to explore cross-culturally aspects of human mating behavior on a global scale. However the nonrepresentation of large cultures restricts the depth of this study. The inferences drawn from such a sample must therefore remain limited despite the impressive sample sizes. In a larger context it raises thoughts on how partial disclosures may misrepresent the design of the larger study.

Situational and experiential factors provide a moral lens through which people judge the morality or otherwise of actions. The research in this volume goes a step further and illustrates that individual differences may interact with these situational and experiential factors to explain the acquisition of positive attitudes to immoral behaviour.

The target article proposes a model involving the important but not well-investigated topics of curiosity and creativity. The model, however, falls short of providing convincing explanations of the basic mechanisms underlying these phenomena. We outline the importance of mechanistic thinking in dealing with the concepts outlined in this article specifically and within psychology and cognitive neuroscience in general.

In this paper, perhaps the first of its kind, an attempt is made to elucidate and examine the Vedantic theory of soul constructed on the basis of the experience of dreamless sleep which, being radically and qualitatively different from waking and dreaming states, is considered by the Vedantins as a state of temporarily purified individual soul (atman), a state of pure substantial consciousness. They take the experience of dreamless sleep as a model experience of the soul's final liberation from the (...) body and its internal as well as external faculties. The ultimate liberation, according to the Vedantins, is a state of total identification of the individual soul with the Universal Soul (Brahman), the summum bonum of every Vedantin. The paper also includes a critique of the Vedantic soul theory by the Buddhists who vehemently deny any autonomous and substantial soul whose essence is unchangingly permanent, pure consciousness and self-illuminating knowledge. The soul is instead interpreted by the Buddhists as a product of the functioning of a person's psycho-physical organism and a mere subject of knowing, thinking, desiring, etc. The analysis further shows that the Vedanta, especially the Advaita Vedanta, metaphysics of soul is inadequate in many respects and mainly based on a priori and scriptural arguments and emotive appeals, whereas the Buddhists deny any kind of autonomous and permanent agent of knowing, thinking and desiring by successfully reducing substantial consciousness to mere acts of knowing. (shrink)

Feminist scholars have consistently argued for broadened definitions of work that include the invisible family and emotion work done predominantly by women. This article focuses on women's resistances to placing these various activities into the common category of work. Drawing from interviews with teleworkers, it examines how and why women narrowed the meaning of work and explores some of the costs that may accompany a more expansive definition of work.

Chiefly, on materialism and Indic philosophy.

Quantum trajectory-based descriptions of interference between two coherent stationary waves in a double-slit experiment are presented, as given by the de Broglie–Bohm and modified de Broglie–Bohm formulations of quantum mechanics. In the dBB trajectory representation, interference between two spreading wave packets can be shown also as resulting from motion of particles. But a trajectory explanation for interference between stationary states is so far not available in this scheme. We show that both the dBB and MdBB trajectories are capable of producing (...) the interference pattern for stationary as well as wave packet states. However, the dBB representation is found to provide the ‘which-way’ information that helps to identify the hole through which the particle emanates. On the other hand, the MdBB representation does not provide any which-way information while giving a satisfactory explanation of interference phenomenon in tune with the de Broglie’s wave particle duality. By counting the trajectories reaching the screen, we have numerically evaluated the intensity distribution of the fringes and found very good agreement with the standard results. (shrink)

This article argues that college-educated women play a crucial part in successful resistance against genocide because they are more likely to forge secure interregional networks and, consequently, better able to shelter victims of mass-persecution than their male peers. We develop our argument through a study of Jewish rescue networks in the Netherlands during the Holocaust. College-educated women were especially valuable during rescue efforts due to their ability to operate as defiant conformists. These women – a small minority who were anything (...) but traditional – could more fully exploit their biographical availability and university networks by concealing interregional resistance work through the strategic performance of traditional feminine roles. Statistical analyses of geocoded rescue networks reveal that rescue networks involving college-educated women were more successful because they funneled Jews across the country without getting exposed. More in-depth exploration of distinct networks identifies three dramaturgical strategies that college-educated women deployed to facilitate clandestine and geographically expansive rescue work: 1) strategic coquetry; 2) strategic self-devaluation; 3) strategic motherhood and wedlock. Taken together, our findings suggest we should focus on how gender and other forms of social status interact to produce the relational and dramaturgical underpinnings of civilian agency in times of emergency. (shrink)

Abstract:Gayatri Spivak and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui writings are regularly and justifiably cited in reference to postcolonial and decolonial feminisms. Both grapple with the thorny matter of representing subalternity and indigeneity, not only in Eurocentric scholarship, but also by migrant and diasporic academics and national elites. In this commentary, I foreground how Spivak and Rivera Cusicanqui's persistent critiques of representation are imperative because they further postcolonial and decolonial feminist scholarship and call for dialogues between them. Such dialogues entail reaching across linguistic, (...) historical, geographical, political, and theoretical boundaries to establish anti-colonial alliances. (shrink)

We usually think nothing of our practice of ‘giving up’ on someone who has behaviors or attitudes that are morally criticizable—after all, it is my prerogative to choose with whom I will associate, and exclusion seems to be an unobjectionable part of my toolkit of social sanctions. However, this paper will argue that it is in many cases impermissible to give up on a morally unpleasant person—in fact, it would be to make an unjustified exception for oneself.

Vedānta endeavours to base itself essentially on the facts of experience—in the fullest sense of the term. It recognizes the occurrence of everyday experience and the so-called fact of evil, but it refuses to view them as real. The real, it says, like Hegel, does not exist, and that which exists is not real. Evil is only an “existent"—as all this Samsara is—but not the ultimate Real. But it will be at once objected that if evil is an appearance, a (...) Maya, why should this appearance appear at all? If it has no foundation in reality, how and why does it occur at all? Further, how can anything be known as real unless it should appear ? Reality must appear. (shrink)

Pt. 1. The lives and teachings of the three Ācāryas and Narayana Guru -- pt. 2. Ideas of the three Ācāryas unitively revisualised.

Liberalism and pluralism are seen as being in tension in liberal Western nation-states, while multiculturalism, as a policy of resource allocation to minority groups, has been the standard response to pluralization. This limits the pluralist potential of a constitutional liberalism. The fusion of a liberal theory of autonomous individuality with a pluralist theory of multiple belonging has to look beyond multicultural policy in order to enhance liberal commitments to citizens through pluralist provisions. An analysis of the Indian Constitution's Fundamental Rights, (...) as a normative document, shows that the citizen can be understood as an autonomous individual given identity through belonging to a plurality of groups. Consequently, rights are taken to accrue to all citizens equally as autonomous individuals, but also by virtue of their belonging to groups, with special provisions made available for vulnerable ones. Rights for a plurality of vulnerable groups should not be seen as illiberal additions but integral to the conception of liberalism. If such a view of citizenship were to be integrated into the liberal constitutions of irreversibly pluralizing Western democracies, then a pluralistic constitutional patriotism could be fostered amongst members of vulnerable groups, while demonstrating that standard liberal rights guarantee equal citizenship for all. (shrink)