Facing the possibility of a surge of COVID-19-infected patients requiring ventilatory support in Intensive Care Units, the Singapore Hospice Council and the Chapter of Palliative Medicine Physicians forward its position on the guiding principles that ought to drive the allocation of ICU beds and its role in care of these patients and their families.

Familial determination, replete with its frequent usurping of patient autonomy, propagation of collusion, and circumnavigation of direct patient involvement in their own care deliberations, continues to impact clinical practice in many Asian nations. Suggestions that underpinning this practice, in Confucian-inspired societies, is the adherence of the populace to the familial centric ideas of personhood espoused by Confucian ethics, provide a novel means of understanding and improving patient-centred care at the end of life. Clinical experience in Confucian-inspired Singapore, however, suggests that (...) personhood is conceived in broader terms. This diverging view inspired a study of local conceptions of personhood and scrutiny of the influence of the family upon it. From the data gathered, a culturally appropriate, clinically relevant and ethically sensitive concept of personhood was proposed: the Ring Theory of Personhood that better captures the nuances of local conceptions of personhood. The Ring Theory highlights the fact that, far from being solely dependent upon familial centric ideals, local conceptions of personhood are dynamic, context dependent, evolving ideas delineated by four dimensions. Using the Ring Theory, the nature of familial influences upon the four dimensions of personhood – the Innate, Individual, Relational and Societal – are examined to reveal that, contrary to perceived knowledge, conceptions of personhood within Confucian societies are not the prime reason for the continued presence of this decision-making model but remain present within local thinking and practices as a sociocultural residue and primarily because of inertia in updating ideas. (shrink)

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has changed the healthcare landscape drastically. Stricken by sharp surges in morbidity and mortality with resource and manpower shortages confounding their efforts, the medical community has witnessed high rates of burnout and post-traumatic stress amongst themselves. Whilst the prevailing literature has offered glimpses into their professional war, no review thus far has collated the deeply personal reflections of physicians and ascertained how their self-concept, self-esteem and perceived self-worth has altered during this crisis. Without adequate intervention, this may (...) have profound effects on their mental and physical health, personal relationships and professional efficacy.MethodsWith mentions of the coronavirus pervading social media by the millions, this paper set out to collate and thematically analyse social media posts containing first-person physician reflections on how COVID-19 affected their lives and their coping mechanisms. A consistent search strategy was employed and a PRISMA flowchart was used to map out the inclusion/exclusion criteria.ResultsA total of 590 social media posts were screened, 511 evaluated, and 108 included for analysis. Salient themes identified include Disruptions to Personal Psycho-Emotional State, Disruptions to Professional Care Delivery, Concern for Family, Response from Institution, Response from Society and Coping Mechanisms.ConclusionIt is evident that the distress experienced by physicians during this time has been manifold, multi-faceted and dominantly negative. Self-concepts were distorted with weakened self-esteem and perceived self-worth observed. The Ring Theory of Personhood (RToP) was adopted to explain COVID-19’s impact on physician personhood as it considers existential, individual, relational and social concepts of the self. These entwined self-concepts serve as ‘compensatory’ to one another, with coping mechanisms buffering and fortifying the physician’s overall personhood. With healthcare institutions playing a vital role in providing timely and targeted support, it was further proposed that a comprehensive assessment tool based on the RToP could be developed to detect at-risk physicians and evaluate the presence and effectiveness of established support structures. (shrink)

Witnessing suffering and death in palliative care can cause moral distress, emotional exhaustion and maladaptive coping strategies. How sense and meaning is made from these experiences influences how physicians think, feel and act as professionals (professional identity formation or PIF). It also determines how they cope with their roles, care for patients and interact with other professionals. Timely, personalised and appropriate support is key as shaping how these physicians develop and contend with sometimes competing beliefs and roles. The Ring Theory (...) of Personhood (RToP) and the Krishna-Pisupati Model (KPM) offer a means of mapping PIF and thus moulding, coping and meaning making. This study uses the RToP and KPM to explore how caring for end-of-life patients impacts the personhood of palliative care physicians. Semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 13 palliative care physicians—eleven females and two males aged between 35 and 50 years—at a cancer specialist centre were conducted. Transcripts of the audio-recorded interviews underwent content and thematic analysis where complementary themes and categories identified were combined to form domains that highlighted the physicians’ key experience of providing end-of-life care. The domains identified were (1) identity formation, (2) conflicts, (3) KPM elements and (4) support systems. Together, results revealed that palliative care physicians are driven by Innate, Individual, Relational and Societal belief systems that create an intertwined professional and personal identity, enabling them to find meaning in their experiences and adapt to present contexts within cultural norms and professional expectations. However, their failure to recognise their need for support when hampered by evolving personal, existential and clinical factors underlines the exigency for ongoing surveillance and a potential role for a RToP-based tool and portfolio system that can detect and direct timely, appropriate support to in-need physicians. (shrink)

“At-own-risk discharges” or “self-discharges” evidences an irretrievable breakdown in the patient–clinician relationship when patients leave care facilities before completion of medical treatment and against medical advice. Dissolution of the therapeutic relationship terminates the physician’s duty of care and professional liability with respect to care of the patient. Acquiescence of an at-own-risk discharge by the clinician is seen as respecting patient autonomy. The validity of such requests pivot on the assumptions that the patient is fully informed and competent to invoke an (...) at-own-risk discharge and that care up to the point of the at-own-risk discharge meets prevailing clinical standards. Palliative care’s use of a multidisciplinary team approach challenges both these assumptions. First by establishing multiple independent therapeutic relations between professionals in the multidisciplinary team and the patient who persists despite an at-own-risk discharge. These enduring therapeutic relationships negate the suggestion that no duty of care is owed the patient. Second, the continued employ of collusion, familial determinations, and the circumnavigation of direct patient involvement in family-centric societies compromises the patient’s decision-making capacity and raises questions as to the patient’s decision-making capacity and their ability to assume responsibility for the repercussions of invoking an at-own-risk discharge. With the validity of at-own-risk discharge request in question and the welfare and patient interest at stake, an alternative approach to assessing at-own-risk discharge requests are called for. The welfare model circumnavigates these concerns and preserves the patient’s welfare through the employ of a multidisciplinary team guided holistic appraisal of the patient’s specific situation that is informed by clinical and institutional standards and evidenced-based practice. The welfare model provides a robust decision-making framework for assessing the validity of at-own-risk discharge requests on a case-by-case basis. (shrink)

‘Terminal discharges’ are carried out in Singapore for patients who wish to die at home. However, if due diligence is not exercised, parallels may be drawn with euthanasia. We present a theoretical discussion beginning with the definition of terminal discharges and the reasons why they are carried out in Singapore. By considering the intention behind terminal discharges and utilising a multidisciplinary team to deliberate on the clinical, social and ethical intricacies with a patient- and context-specific approach, euthanasia is avoided. It (...) is hoped that this will provide a platform for professionals in palliative medicine to negotiate challenging issues when arranging a terminal discharge, so as to avoid the pitfall of committing euthanasia in a country such as Singapore where euthanasia is illegal. It is hoped that a set of guidelines for terminal discharges may someday be realised to assist professionals in Singapore and around the world. (shrink)

The primary question this article deals with is one of ontology. In a dystopian world populated with genetically engineered windups and hybrids, what constitutes ‘the human’? This article looks at how the posthuman body in a dystopian novel like The Windup Girl, set in a world where geographical, political, social, economic and religious norms and boundaries are erased and reconfigured, can in no way simply remain a mere body, but transmutes into a highly complex political and social site from whence (...) multiple relations of power originate, travel and culminate in. The titular character in the novel, Emiko, is a genetically engineered windup created in a laboratory, with obedience and the need to please etched right into her DNA. This makes her a prized possession for a brothel owner in Bangkok, once her Japanese master abandons her. She is both desirable and revolting to her customers at the same time – her perfect body is too perfect, her genetic urge to please at any cost draws them in, but her involuntary shaking and robot-like jerking disgusts them. The windup can thus be seen as both the Lacanian object cause of desire and Kristeva’s abject body. (shrink)

The application of continuous deep sedation in the treatment of intractable suffering at the end of life continues to be tied to a number of concerns that have negated its use in palliative care. Part of the resistance towards use of this treatment option of last resort has been the continued association of CDS with physician-associated suicide and/or euthanasia, which is compounded by a lack clinical guidelines and a failure to cite this treatment under the aegis of a palliative care (...) approach. I argue that reinstituting a palliative care-inspired approach that includes a holistic review of the patient’s situation and the engagement of a multidisciplinary team guided by clearly defined practice requirements that have been lacking amongst many prevailing guidelines will overcome prevailing objections to this practice and allow for the legitimization of this process. (shrink)

The present paper takes a critical posthumanist lens to study the consequences of rapid urbanisation of the Chinese landscape as presented in the short story ‘Good Hunting’, by Ken Liu. One of the main characters in the story is Yan, a huli jing (fox-spirit), whose ability to switch between her fox and human forms is severely impaired by the loss of remnant nature in China, and the subsequent erosion of the qi from the soil. It is not just the natural (...) landscape that undergoes a transformation during urbanisation – the remnants of nature do not remain untouched by this process. Beings like Yan, who continue to inhabit the place that used to be their home, do not remain the same that they were pre-urbanisation. The city changes them, moulds them in ways hitherto inconceivable, and they undergo this transmogrification of their bodies and their self in order to survive. The article draws out the historical relationship between urban spaces and (post)human bodies, with a specific focus on the Chinese body, drawing parallels between the ideals associated with the city and juxtaposing them with what it means to be posthuman. The paper also interrogates Yan’s status as a liminal entity before and after Hong Kong’s transformation, and her use of liminality as a survival strategy. (shrink)

Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) is an essential part of public health programmes. Since M&E is the backbone of public health programmes, ethical considerations are important in their conduct. Some of the key ethical considerations are avoiding conflicts of interest, maintaining independence of judgement, maintaining fairness, transparency, full disclosure, privacy and confidentiality, respect, responsibility, accountability, empowerment and sustainability. There are several ethical frameworks in public health, but none focusing on the monitoring and evaluation process. There is a need to institutionalise the (...) ethical review of M&E proposals. A theoretical framework for ethical considerations is proposed in this paper. This proposed theoretical framework can act as the blueprint for building the capacity of ethics committees to review M&E proposals. A case study is discussed in this context. After thorough field testing, this practical and field-based ethical framework can be widely used by donor agencies, M&E teams, institutional review boards and ethics committees. (shrink)

Background Supporting physicians in Intensive Care Units s as they face dying patients at unprecedented levels due to the COVID-19 pandemic is critical. Amidst a dearth of such data and guided by evidence that nurses in ICUs experience personal, professional and existential issues in similar conditions, a systematic scoping review is proposed to evaluate prevailing accounts of physicians facing dying patients in ICUs through the lens of Personhood. Such data would enhance understanding and guide the provision of better support for (...) ICU physicians. Methods An SSR adopts the Systematic Evidenced Based Approach to map prevailing accounts of caring for dying patients in ICUs. To enhance the transparency and reproducibility of this process, concurrent and independent use of tabulated summaries, thematic analysis and directed content analysis is adopted. Results Eight thousand three hundred fifty-eight abstracts were reviewed from four databases, 474 full-text articles were evaluated, 58 articles were included, and the Split Approach revealed six categories/themes centered around the Innate, Individual, Relational and Societal Rings of Personhood, conflicts in providing end of life care and coping mechanisms employed. Conclusion This SSR suggests that caring for dying patients in ICU impacts how physicians view their personhood. To resolve conflicts within individual concepts of personhood, physicians use prioritization, reframing and rely on accessible, personalized support from colleagues to steer coping strategies. An adapted form of the Ring Theory of Personhood is proposed to direct timely personalized, appropriate and holistic support. (shrink)

IntroductionClinical ethics committees (CECs) support and enhance communication and complex decision making, educate healthcare professionals and the public on ethical matters and maintain standards of care. However, a consistent approach to training members of CECs is lacking. A systematic scoping review was conducted to evaluate prevailing CEC training curricula to guide the design of an evidence-based approach.MethodsArksey and O’Malley’s methodological framework for conducting scoping reviews was used to evaluate prevailing accounts of CEC training published in six databases. Braun and Clarke’s (...) thematic analysis approach was adopted to thematically analyse data across different healthcare and educational settings.Results7370 abstracts were identified, 92 full-text articles were reviewed and 55 articles were thematically analysed to reveal four themes: the design, pedagogy, content and assessment of CEC curricula.ConclusionFew curricula employ consistent approaches to training. Many programmes fail to provide CEC trainees with sufficient knowledge, skills and experience to meet required competencies. Most programmes do not inculcate prevailing sociocultural, research, clinical and educational considerations into training processes nor provide longitudinal support for CEC trainees. Most CEC training programmes are not supported by host institutions threatening the sustainability of the programme and compromising effective assessment and longitudinal support of CEC trainees. While further reviews are required, this review underlines the need for host organisations to support and oversee a socioculturally appropriate ethically sensitive, clinically relevant longitudinal training, assessment and support process for CEC trainees if CECs are to meet their roles effectively. (shrink)

It is evident, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic that has physicians confronting death and dying at unprecedented levels along with growing data suggesting that physicians who care for dying patients face complex emotional, psychological and behavioural effects, that there is a need for their better understanding and the implementation of supportive measures. Taking into account data positing that effects of caring for dying patients may impact a physician’s concept of personhood, or “what makes you, ‘you’”, we adopt Radha (...) Krishna’s Ring Theory of Personhood (RToP) to scrutinise the experiences of physicians working in intensive care units (ICU) using a fictional scenario that was inspired by real events. The impact of death and dying, its catalysts, internal constituents, external factors, dyssynchrony, and buffers, specific to ICU physicians, were identified and explored. Such a framework allows for ramifications to be considered holistically and facilitates the curation of strategies for conflict resolution. This evaluation of the RToP acknowledges the experience and wide-ranging effects it has on ICU physicians. As such, our findings provide insight into their specific needs and highlight the importance of support on a personal and organisational level. Although further research needs to be conducted, the RToP could serve as the basis for a longitudinal assessment tool supported by the use of portfolios or mentorship due to their provision of personalised, appropriate, specific, timely, accessible and long-term support. (shrink)

BackgroundAmidst expanding roles in education and policy making, questions have been raised about the ability of Clinical Ethics Committees (CEC) s to carry out effective ethics consultations (CECons). However recent reviews of CECs suggest that there is no uniformity to CECons and no effective means of assessing the quality of CECons. To address this gap a systematic scoping review of prevailing tools used to assess CECons was performed to foreground and guide the design of a tool to evaluate the quality (...) of CECons.MethodsGuided by Levac et al’s (2010) methodological framework for conducting scoping reviews, the research team performed independent literature reviews of accounts of assessments of CECons published in six databases. The included articles were independently analyzed using content and thematic analysis to enhance the validity of the findings.ResultsNine thousand sixty-six abstracts were identified, 617 full-text articles were reviewed, 104 articles were analyzed and four themes were identified – the purpose of the CECons evaluation, the various domains assessed, the methods of assessment used and the long-term impact of these evaluations.ConclusionThis review found prevailing assessments of CECons to be piecemeal due to variable goals, contextual factors and practical limitations. The diversity in domains assessed and tools used foregrounds the lack of minimum standards upheld to ensure baseline efficacy.To advance a contextually appropriate, culturally sensitive, program specific assessment tool to assess CECons, clear structural and competency guidelines must be established in the curation of CECons programs, to evaluate their true efficacy and maintain clinical, legal and ethical standards. (shrink)

Appropriate and balanced decision-making is sentinel to goal setting and the provision of appropriate clinical care that are attuned to preserving the best interests of the patient. Current family-led decision-making in family-centric societies such as those in Singapore and other countries in East Asia are believed to compromise these objectives in favor of protecting familial interests. Redressing these skewed clinical practices employing autonomy-based patient-centric approaches however have been found wanting in their failure to contend with wider sociocultural considerations that impact (...) care determinations. Evaluation of a number of alternative decision-making frameworks set out to address the shortcomings of prevailing atomistic and family-centric decision-making models within the confines of end-of-life care prove these alternative frameworks to be little better at protecting the best interests of vulnerable patients. As a result, we propose the Welfare Model that we believe is attentive to the relevant socio-culturally significant considerations of a particular case and better meets the needs of end-of-life care goals of preserving the welfare of patients. Employing a multi-professional team evaluation guided by regnant psychosocial, legal, and clinical standards and the prevailing practical and clinical realities of the particular patient’s setting the Welfare Model provides a clinically relevant, culturally sensitive, transparent, and evidence-based approach to care determinations. (shrink)

Similarity profiled association mining from time stamped transaction databases is an important topic of research relatively less addressed in the field of temporal data mining. Mining temporal patterns from these time series databases requires choosing and applying similarity measure for similarity computations and subsequently pruning temporal patterns. This research proposes a novel z-space based interest measure named as Krishna Sudarsana for time-stamped transaction databases by extending interest measure Srihass proposed in previous research. Krishna Sudarsana is designed by using (...) the product based fuzzy Gaussian membership function and performs similarity computations in z-space to determine the similarity degree between any two temporal patterns. The interest measure is designed by considering z-values between z = 0 and z = 3.09. Applying the Krishna Sudarsana requires moving the threshold value given by user to a different transformation space which is a defined as a function of standard deviation. In addition to proposing interest measure, new expressions for standard deviation and equivalent z-space threshold are derived for similarity computations. For experimental evaluation, we considered Naïve, Sequential and Spamine algorithms that applies Euclidean distance function and compared performance of these three approaches to Z-Spamine algorithm that uses Krishna Sudarsana by choosing various test cases. Experiment results proved the performance of the proposed approach is better to Sequential approach that uses snapshot database scan strategy and Spamine approach that uses lattice based database scan strategy. (shrink)

Contrary Thinking, an anthology of selected essays by Daya Krishna, contains, among others, two essays that deal with problems pertaining to negation: “Negation: Can Philosophy Ever Recover from It?” and “Some Problems Regarding Thinking about Abhāva in the Indian Tradition.” These essays comprise part 5 of this book, and the editorial introduction to this part concludes with the following remark:With characteristic philosophical irony, Daya Krishna raises the problem that non-being itself is non-existent and that negation is nothing at (...) all.In both these essays, we find some observations by Daya Krishna regarding the views about negation (abhāva) that are admitted by the Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika schools, and the way in .. (shrink)

The Making of a Modern Indian Artist-Craftsman: Devi Prasad. By Naman P. AhuJa, with contributions by Krishna Kumar, Kristine Michael, Bob Overy, and Sunand Prasad. New Delhi: Routledge, 2012. Pp. 320, 392 illustrations. Rs. 2495.

Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem is well known in Mathematics/Logic/Philosophy circles. Gödel was able to find a way for any given P (UTM), (read as, “P of UTM” for “Program of Universal Truth Machine”), actually to write down a complicated polynomial that has a solution iff (=if and only if), G is true, where G stands for a Gödel-sentence. So, if G’s truth is a necessary condition for the truth of a given polynomial, then P (UTM) has to answer first that (...) G is true in order to secure the truth of the said polynomial. But, interestingly, P (UTM) could never answer that G was true. This necessarily implies that there is at least one truth a P (UTM), however large it may be, cannot speak out. Daya Krishna and Karl Potter’s controversy regarding the construal of India’s Philosophies dates back to the time of Potter’s publication of “Presuppositions of India’s Philosophies” (1963, Englewood Cliffs Prentice-Hall Inc.) In attacking many of India’s philosophies, Daya Krishna appears to have unwittingly touched a crucial point: how can there be the knowledge of a ‘non-cognitive’ mokṣa? [‘mokṣa’ is the final state of existence of an individual away from Social Contract]—See this author’s Indian Social Contract and its Dissolution (2008) mokṣa does not permit the knowledge of one’s own self in the ordinary way with threefold distinction, i.e., subject–knowledge-object or knower–knowledge–known. But what is important is to demonstrate whether such ‘knowledge’ of non-cognitive mokṣa state can be logically shown, in a language, to be possible to attain, and that there is no contradiction involved in such demonstration, because, no one can possibly express the ‘experience-itself’ in language. Hence, if such ‘knowledge’ can be shown to be logically not impossible in language, then, not only Daya Krishna’s arguments against ‘non-cognitive mokṣa’ get refuted but also it would show the possibility of achieving ‘completeness’ in its truest sense, as opposed to Gödel’s ‘Incompleteness’. In such circumstances, man would himself become a Universal Truth Machine. This is because the final state of mokṣa is construed as the state of complete knowledge in Advaita. This possibility of ‘completeness’ is set in this paper in the backdrop of Śrī Śaṅkarācārya’s Advaitic (Non-dualistic) claim involved in the mahāvākyas (extra-ordinary propositions). (Mahāvākyas that Śaṅkara refers to are basically taken from different Upaniṣads. For example, “Aham Brahmāsmi” is from Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanisad, and “Tattvamasi” is from Chāndogya Upaniṣad. Śrī Śaṅkarācārya has written extensively. His main works include his Commentary on Brahma-Sūtras, on major Upaniṣads, and on ŚrīmadBhagavadGītā, called Bhāṣyas of them, respectively. Almost all these works are available in English translation published by Advaita Ashrama, 5 Dehi Entally Road, Calcutta, 700014.) On the other hand, the ‘Incompleteness’ of Gödel is due to the intervening G-sentence, which has an adverse self-referential element. Gödel’s incompleteness theorem in its mathematical form with an elaborate introduction by R.W. Braithwaite can be found in Meltzer (Kurt Gödel: on formally undecidable propositions of principia mathematica and related systems. Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh, 1962). The present author believes first that semantic content cannot be substituted by any amount of arithmoquining, (Arithmoquining or arithmatization means, as Braithwaite says,—“Gödel’s novel metamathematical method is that of attaching numbers to the signs, to the series of signs (formulae) and to the series of series of signs (“proof-schemata”) which occur in his formal system…Gödel invented what might be called co-ordinate metamathematics…”) Meltzer (1962 p. 7). In Antone (2006) it is said “The problem is that he (Gödel) tries to replace an abstract version of the number (which can exist) with the concept of a real number version of that abstract notion. We can state the abstraction of what the number needs to be, [the arithmoquining of a number cannot be a proof-pair and an arithmoquine] but that is a concept that cannot be turned into a specific number, because by definition no such number can exist.”.), especially so where first-hand personal experience is called for. Therefore, what ultimately rules is the semanticity as in a first-hand experience. Similar points are voiced, albeit implicitly, in Antone (Who understands Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, 2006). (“…it is so important to understand that Gödel’s theorem only is true with respect to formal systems—which is the exact opposite of the analogous UTM (Antone (2006) webpage 2. And galatomic says in the same discussion chain that “saying” that it ((is)) only true for formal systems is more significant… We only know the world through “formal” categories of understanding… If the world as it is in itself has no incompleteness problem, which I am sure is true, it does not mean much, because that is not the world of time and space that we experience. So it is more significant that formal systems are incomplete than the inexperiencable ‘World in Itself’ has no such problem.—galatomic”) Antone (2006) webpage 2. Nevertheless galatomic certainly, but unwittingly succeeds in highlighting the possibility of experiencing the ‘completeness’ Second, even if any formal system including the system of Advaita of Śaṅkara is to be subsumed or interpreted under Gödel’s theorem, or Tarski’s semantic unprovability theses, the ultimate appeal would lie to the point of human involvement in realizing completeness since any formal system is ‘Incomplete’ always by its very nature as ‘objectual’, and fails to comprehend the ‘subject’ within its fold. (shrink)

The present work, "Indian Philosophers of the Recent Past" , reflects and deliberates over recent Indian scholarship in philosophy. It is to get the present and future generations of philosopher-scholars acquainted with the rich Indian philosophical heritage. This is going to deepen our insights into the nature of philosophical consciousness and into the act of philosophizing. It makes an attempt to analyse the philosophies of outstanding philosophers such as K.C. Bhattacharyya, S. Radhakrishnan, R.D. Ranade, A.C. Mukerji, T.R.V. Murti, N.K. Devraja, (...) J.L. Mehta, J.N. Mohanty, Daya Krishna and S.L. Pandey. The post-Independent Indian philosophy is said to have unique tendencies and trends; some of them can be easily identified as existentialist and phenomenological, idealistic, realistic, humanistic, linguistic and analytico-philosophical comparative philosophy and Indian defence of metaphysics. The volume is unique in its conceptual clarity, lucid expression, systematic presentation and critical exposition of the subject matter. It is undoubtedly a valuable contribution for the seekers of Indian philosophical system which should evoke keen interest among scholars and students of philosophy. (shrink)

In an episode in the Bhagavadgita Arjuna refuses to fight that would involve killing his teachers, elders, relatives and friends. Krishna argues that he should fight because it is the special duty of a soldier to fight in a just war, one should do one’s duty regardless of the consequences, one should act for the common good, one should build an unwavering character taking victory and defeat, pleasure and pain, friend and foe in the same way, etc. Some of (...) these reasons may be taken to promote deontology, others utilitarianism, yet others virtue ethics that are often viewed contemporarily as incompatible ethical theories. We argue that these three theories are not necessarily incompatible and may be linked to three sides of human nature: deontology to cognitivity, utilitarianism to dynamism and virtue ethics to affectivity. We also argue that Krishna may be taken to promote ethical pluralism just as he may be taken to promote religious pluralism by recommending the path of knowledge, the path of action and the path of devotion from an inclusive perspective. (shrink)

Thanks to the Inlaks Foundation in India, I was able to do my doctoral research on Our Talk About Nonexistents at Oxford in the early eighties. The two greatest philosophers of that heaven of analytical philosophy - Peter Strawson and Michael Dummett - supervised my work, reading and criticising all the fledgling philosophy that I wrote during those three years. At Sir Peter's request, Gareth Evans, shortly before his death, lent me an unpublished transcript of Kripke's John Locke Lectures. Work (...) on the Appendix about Indian Philosophy was supervised by the late Professor Bimal Krishna Matilal with whom informal but intense philosophical conversations used to spill over into dinner at his place almost every other day. It was Professor Matilal who sent me, over a summer, to study a tough Navya-Nyaya text under his own Nyaya teacher Pandit Visvabandhu Tarkatirtha at Calcutta. All four of these teachers were as kind to me as my life-long mentor in philosophy Professor Pranab Kumar Sen, whose clarity and depth remain the unreachable regu lative ideal of my intellect. When I came back to India, my life became blissfully free of the agonising anxiety to publish, until, after a conference at Jadavpur University where I gave an impromptu paper, ironically enough, on Non-doings, I met Derek Parfit. He had a six-hour conversation with me, explicitly planning my life. Five years had already elapsed since I had finished my D. Phil, but Derek read my thesis and liked it. (shrink)

This seventh volume of Collected Papers includes 70 papers comprising 974 pages on (theoretic and applied) neutrosophics, written between 2013-2021 by the author alone or in collaboration with the following 122 co-authors from 22 countries: Mohamed Abdel-Basset, Abdel-Nasser Hussian, C. Alexander, Mumtaz Ali, Yaman Akbulut, Amir Abdullah, Amira S. Ashour, Assia Bakali, Kousik Bhattacharya, Kainat Bibi, R. N. Boyd, Ümit Budak, Lulu Cai, Cenap Özel, Chang Su Kim, Victor Christianto, Chunlai Du, Chunxin Bo, Rituparna Chutia, Cu Nguyen Giap, Dao The (...) Son, Vinayak Devvrat, Arindam Dey, Partha Pratim Dey, Fahad Alsharari, Feng Yongfei, S. Ganesan, Shivam Ghildiyal, Bibhas C. Giri, Masooma Raza Hashmi, Ahmed Refaat Hawas, Hoang Viet Long, Le Hoang Son, Hongbo Wang, Hongnian Yu, Mihaiela Iliescu, Saeid Jafari, Temitope Gbolahan Jaiyeola, Naeem Jan, R. Jeevitha, Jun Ye, Anup Khan, Madad Khan, Salma Khan, Ilanthenral Kandasamy, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, Darjan Karabašević, Kifayat Ullah, Kishore Kumar P.K., Sujit Kumar De, Prasun Kumar Nayak, Malayalan Lathamaheswari, Luong Thi Hong Lan, Anam Luqman, Luu Quoc Dat, Tahir Mahmood, Hafsa M. Malik, Nivetha Martin, Mai Mohamed, Parimala Mani, Mingcong Deng, Mohammed A. Al Shumrani, Mohammad Hamidi, Mohamed Talea, Kalyan Mondal, Muhammad Akram, Muhammad Gulistan, Farshid Mofidnakhaei, Muhammad Shoaib, Muhammad Riaz, Karthika Muthusamy, Nabeela Ishfaq, Deivanayagampillai Nagarajan, Sumera Naz, Nguyen Dinh Hoa, Nguyen Tho Thong, Nguyen Xuan Thao, Noor ul Amin, Dragan Pamučar, Gabrijela Popović, S. Krishna Prabha, Surapati Pramanik, Priya R, Qiaoyan Li, Yaser Saber, Said Broumi, Saima Anis, Saleem Abdullah, Ganeshsree Selvachandran, Abdulkadir Sengür, Seyed Ahmad Edalatpanah, Shahbaz Ali, Shahzaib Ashraf, Shouzhen Zeng, Shio Gai Quek, Shuangwu Zhu, Shumaiza, Sidra Sayed, Sohail Iqbal, Songtao Shao, Sundas Shahzadi, Dragiša Stanujkić, Željko Stević, Udhayakumar Ramalingam, Zunaira Rashid, Hossein Rashmanlou, Rajkumar Verma, Luige Vlădăreanu, Victor Vlădăreanu, Desmond Jun Yi Tey, Selçuk Topal, Naveed Yaqoob, Yanhui Guo, Yee Fei Gan, Yingcang Ma, Young Bae Jun, Yuping Lai, Hafiz Abdul Wahab, Wei Yang, Xiaohong Zhang, Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas, Lemnaouar Zedam. (shrink)

The paper discusses the complexity of spiritual quest and bordercrossing dialogues in India. It discusses the multiverse of engagement between Hindus and Christians and the plural streams of co-walking, contradictions and confrontations. It discusses the complex histories of encounters between Hindus and Christians. It discusses the inter-religious dialogues undertaken by religious leaders, reformers and common people from both the traditions.

Can humans get arbitrarily capable reinforcement learning agents to do their bidding? Or will sufficiently capable RL agents always find ways to bypass their intended objectives by shortcutting their reward signal? This question impacts how far RL can be scaled, and whether alternative paradigms must be developed in order to build safe artificial general intelligence. In this paper, we study when an RL agent has an instrumental goal to tamper with its reward process, and describe design principles that prevent instrumental (...) goals for two different types of reward tampering. Combined, the design principles can prevent reward tampering from being an instrumental goal. The analysis benefits from causal influence diagrams to provide intuitive yet precise formalizations. (shrink)

A scholar of eminence in the field of Indian philosophy, Bimal K. Matilal was one of the leading exponents of Indian logic and epistemology. Painstakingly compiled from Matilal's huge body of work, this collection of essays includes a set of previously unpublished essays and reveals the extraordinary depth of Matilal's philosophical interests.

In several experiments of survival analysis, the cause of death or failure of any subject may be characterized by more than one cause. Since the cause of failure may be dependent or independent, in this work, we discuss the competing risk lifetime model under progressive type-II censored where the removal follows a binomial distribution. We consider the Akshaya lifetime failure model under independent causes and the number of subjects removed at every failure time when the removal follows the binomial distribution (...) with known parameters. The classical and Bayesian approaches are used to account for the point and interval estimation procedures for parameters and parametric functions. The Bayes estimate is obtained by using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method under symmetric and asymmetric loss functions. We apply the Metropolis–Hasting algorithm to generate MCMC samples from the posterior density function. A simulated data set is applied to diagnose the performance of the two techniques applied here. The data represented the survival times of mice kept in a conventional germ-free environment, all of which were exposed to a fixed dose of radiation at the age of 5 to 6 weeks, which was used as a practice for the model discussed. There are 3 causes of death. In group 1, we considered thymic lymphoma to be the first cause and other causes to be the second. On the base of mice data, the survival mean time of mice of the second cause is higher than the first cause. (shrink)

As information technologies have become synonymous with progress in modern society, several ethical concerns have surfaced about their societal implications. In the past few decades, information technologies have had a value-laden impact on social evolution. However, there is limited agreement on the responsibility of businesses and innovators concerning the ethical aspects of information technologies. There is a need to understand the role of business incentives and attitudes in driving technological progress and to understand how they steer the ethics discourse on (...) technology. In the information technology industry, there is an observed trivialization of ethics supported by a business driven and technology-centric approach to ethics. This trivialization rests on hardened beliefs, ideologies, and arguments which hint at reduced accountability for business and tend to individualize social responsibility. The phenomenon of ethics trivialization needs to be duly addressed to resolve the tensions between business needs and ethical concerns. This paper has identified from literature and conceptually analyzed the beliefs and ideologies underlying ethics trivialization which undermine ethics in business contexts. The paper has attempted to address the business concerns indicated by this phenomenon as well as highlight the weaknesses of its assumptions, rhetoric, and justifications. The aim of this paper is to systematically present the justifications in favor of and against the practice of ethics trivialization in the information technology domain, thereby highlighting the need to develop frameworks for assessment of ethical responsibility, accountability, and democratization of the value trade-offs involved in the design of technologies. (shrink)

This book explores the contours of a transformational sociology which seeks to reconsider the horizons of sociological imagination. It questions accepted modernist assumptions such as the equation of society and nation-state, the dualism of individual and society and that of ontology and epistemology. Arguing that contemporary sociology suffers from what Ulrich Beck calls the Nato-like fire power of western sociology, it argues that sociology has to open itself to transcivilizational dialogues and planetary conversations about self, culture and society. The book (...) also challenges scholars to go beyond a privileging of the post-traditional telos of modernist sociology and puts forward a foundational interrogation of modernist sociology. It underscores the limitations of established conventions of sociology and considering an alternative sociology based upon Confucian vision and practice of self-transformation. This collection offers a way to go beyond dominant structures of modern sociology and contemporary dominant ways of thinking about and doing sociology helping us cultivate a transdisciplinary sociology. (shrink)

ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE: AN INTRODUCTION. The aim of this volume is to extend the horizon of philosophical analysis as it is ...

This essay analyzes the representations of time and memory in Holocaust literature through a comparative study of Charlotte Delbo’s memoir Days and Memory and Ida Fink’s three stories “A Scrap of Time,” “A Second Scrap of Time,” and “Traces.” Although both the writers make use of time and memory to represent the Holocaust, their ways of representation vary significantly. Memory and time are used in Delbo to show the timelessness in complex layers of memory and to recreate a reality through (...) inventive narrative style. Whereas, in Fink, they are used to delineate the scraps of time in the ruins of memory and to create a tragic domestic reality through conventional narrativity. Moreover, this essay cautions against the danger of misrepresentation of memory as “amnesia,” often represented in the canonical postmodernist views of memory. (shrink)

While it is known that reward induces attentional prioritization, it is not clear what effect reward-learning has when associated with stimuli that are not fully perceived. The masked priming paradigm has been extensively used to investigate the indirect impact of brief stimuli on response behavior. Interestingly, the effect of masked primes is observed even when participants choose their responses freely. While classical theories assume this process to be automatic, recent studies have provided evidence for attentional modulations of masked priming effects. (...) Most such studies have manipulated bottom-up or top-down modes of attentional selection, but the role of “newer” forms of attentional control such as reward-learning and selection history remains unclear. In two experiments, with number and arrow primes, we examined whether reward-mediated attentional selection modulates masked priming when responses are chosen freely. In both experiments, we observed that primes associated with high-reward lead to enhanced free-choice priming compared to primes associated with no-reward. The effect was seen on both proportion of choices and response times, and was more evident in the faster responses. In the slower responses, the effect was diminished. Our study adds to the growing literature showing the susceptibility of masked priming to factors related to attention and executive control. (shrink)

The question of capitalism’s relationship to issues of race, racism and processes of racialisation has become increasingly prominent in contemporary debates. This special issue of Historical Materialism on ‘Race and Capital’ seeks to intervene in these debates. In this Introduction, we situate the special issue within this wider political, historical and theoretical context. We begin by reconstructing some of the key tensions and fault lines within contemporary discussions of race and racism, particularly in relation to the Marxist tradition. Against those (...) who claim a primarily oppositional relationship between the Marxist tradition and anti-racist thinking, we chart a historical account of key moments in which Marxist movements and thinkers have attempted to articulate distinctively historical-materialist accounts of race and racism. We then situate the key themes of the special issue – and the various articles that compose the issue – against this background. (shrink)

With the increasing prevalence of Internet usage, Internet-Delivered Psychological Treatment (IDPT) has become a valuable tool to develop improved treatments of mental disorders. IDPT becomes complicated and labor intensive because of overlapping emotion in mental health. To create a usable learning application for IDPT requires diverse labeled datasets containing an adequate set of linguistic properties to extract word representations and segmentations of emotions. In medical applications, it is challenging to successfully refine such datasets since emotion-aware labeling is time consuming. Other (...) known issues include vocabulary sizes per class, data source, method of creation, and baseline for the human performance level. This paper focuses on the application of personalized mental health interventions using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and attention-based in-depth entropy active learning. The objective of this research is to increase the trainable instances using a semantic clustering mechanism. For this purpose, we propose a method based on synonym expansion by semantic vectors. Semantic vectors based on semantic information derived from the context in which it appears are clustered. The resulting similarity metrics help to select the subset of unlabeled text by using semantic information. The proposed method separates unlabeled text and includes it in the next active learning mechanism cycle. Our method updates model training by using the new training points. The cycle continues until it reaches an optimal solution, and it converts all the unlabeled text into the training set. Our in-depth experimental results show that the synonym expansion semantic vectors help enhance training accuracy while not harming the results. The bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) architecture with an attention mechanism achieved 0.85 Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC curve) on the blind test set. The learned embedding is then used to visualize the activated word's contribution to each symptom and find the psychiatrist's qualitative agreement. Our method improves the detection rate of depression symptoms from online forum text using the unlabeled forum texts. (shrink)

Relates To Important Mystical Concepts Contained In Guru Granth. Seeks To Revive The Original Spiritual Doctrines Of The Great Masters And Impact Contemporary Meaning Of Their. 13 Chapters-Bibliography, Index. Without Dustjacket.

This paper aims to understand the kind of activities that industrial actors develop in order to protect their enterprises during industrial crisis conditions. A series of political unrest, insurgency, economic turmoil, deadly earthquakes, and economic embargo at the Indo- Nepal boarder escalated the industrial crisis in Nepal. The quest for sustainability of enterprises during the enduring nature of the crisis stimulated for a more detail conversation and survey. A perceptual survey of industrial actors accompanying conversation therein indicates that trade union (...) and association leaders develop positive attitude and advance specific activities for protecting their enterprises during industrial crisis conditions. The study finds that an empathic nature helps to develop a positive attitude among the industrial actors, which seems contributory for enterprises to survive during crisis conditions. The actors tend to positively perceive significance of specific activities under the conditions of difficulties and hardships and enhance immunity to the industrial crisis. This paper argues that the empathic nature of the industrial actors becomes more effective to safeguard the pluralistic interests of the stakeholders of the enterprise than the self- centric nature of the actors. The actors are not only engaged in safeguarding their claims on the industry but are also contributing—beyond their routine work—positively to strengthen the enterprise immunity during difficulties. This paper concludes with an insight of shifting managerial attention from the generic concepts like cost minimisation and product differentiation to the concepts of regularity in supply of goods and services in the business network by expanding the scope of industrial relations vertically and horizontally. The empathic nature of industrial actors enhances the effectiveness of the general system theory and social network theory by developing understanding of the role of industrial actors’ relations in sustaining and operationalizing a business network under organizational crisis conditions. (shrink)

The success of an organization depends on its quality management (QM) and organizational culture (OC). While QM seeks to improve the caliber of products and services, OC consider to share beliefs and behaviors that impact working relationships. Together, they deliver excellent performance and a competitive advantage. The goal of the study is to evaluate how various OC factors affect QM methods and their effectiveness. The comprehensive evaluation provided by the study is based on data from 320 experts, validated questionnaires and (...) advanced statistical techniques like correlation analysis, ANOVA and multiple regression. The study shows a significant relationship between certain OC variables and QM outcomes, highlighting the advantages of process adherence, communication process and encouraging leadership style on the effectiveness of QM and customer satisfaction. OC must be in line with QM objectives to improve customer experiences and organizational success. The research highlights the significance of integrating OC elements into QM strategies to foster an environment that drives higher output and improved customer satisfaction. (shrink)