This article discusses different conceptions and translations of the devadasi system in transnational Dalit feminist activism. I focus specifically on activist participation at the 1994 Asia Tribunal on Women’s Human Rights in Tokyo, Japan and the construction of an analogy between the experiences and struggles of devadasis and that of ‘military comfort women’, i.e. women from Japan’s former colonies who were abducted and raped by the Japanese military during World War II. I argue that strategic claims of commonality are part (...) of the process of making specific, local practices legible to a global audience and that these sorts of claims also enable transnational feminist activism and solidarity. (shrink)

This book presents a selection of essays by the Indian philosopher J.L. Mehta on the topics of hermeneutics and phenomenology containing many original ...

What grounds facts of the form? One promising answer is: facts of the form. A different promising answer is: x itself. Isaac Wilhelm has recently argued that the second answer is superior to the first. In this paper, I rebut his argument.

_ Source: _Volume 11, Issue 2, pp 117 - 148 The paper examines the problem of self-knowledge from the perspectives of Plotinus and the Indian Advaita school. Analyzing the subject-object relation, I show that according to both Plotinus and Advaita thinkers, full self-knowledge demands complete absence of otherness. Plotinus argues that if self-consciousness is divided into subject-object relation then one will know oneself as contemplated but not as contemplating and no real self-knowledge obtains in this case. Śaṅkara, who constitutes an (...) important representative of Advaita thought, points out that the self cannot know itself as an object because what is called an object to be known becomes established when it is separated from the self, the subject. I argue that at the level of the One, similar to the state of _ātman_ consciousness in Advaita framework, the soul experiences itself in expansive non-dual consciousness. Lastly, I examine the role of non-duality as the foundation of knowledge. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 1, Page 209-231, January 2022.

ABSTRACT So far eleven series of Bigg Boss have garnered huge television rating points making it a profitable endeavour for all those involved. Despite that the show has claimed its unique space among several Hindi general entertainment channels, it has been criticized for its controversial contents, posing several questions on psychological safety and ethicality of means used to achieve successful business ends. Showing a disclaimer at the beginning of each show may suffice legal needs but what about the ethical ones?

This study examines the Canadian Code of Ethics for Registered Nurses as a discursive mechanism for shaping nurses' professional identity using a Foucauldian lens. Nurses are considered essential in healthcare, yet the nursing profession has struggled to be recognized for its discipline‐specific knowledge and expertise and, as such, has remained the subject of and subject to the dominant discourses within healthcare and society generally. Developing a professional identity in nursing begins after the necessary education and training are achieved and embodies (...) the profession's history, values, code of ethics, and expectations of the profession that distinguish it from other professions. Since nurses' professional identity is shaped through discourse, it raises the question of whether there are spaces to reconceptualize nurses' subject position within health care. Since professional identity is considered the embodiment of knowledge and practice, the code of ethics bears examination both for its effect on nurses' professional identity and as a potential site from which to challenge hegemonic assumptions. This article discusses the concept of professional identity in nursing and its development through the discursive formations in the code of ethics. The sources of power/knowledge are examined as both mechanisms of control and as spaces for change. (shrink)

Pure insight, however is in the first instance without any content; it is the sheer disappearance of content; but by its negative attitude towards what it excludes it will make itself real and give itself a content.—Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind.

Naïve realism is a theory of perception with great explanatory ambitions. It has been influentially argued that, in order to realize these explanatory ambitions, the naïve realist should say that any perception belongs to just one fundamental kind. I think, however, that adopting this commitment does not particularly help the naïve realist to realize her explanatory ambitions, and so is not warranted. This result is significant because once this commitment about fundamental kinds is relinquished, we see that it is possible (...) to develop some new and surprising forms of naïve realism—most notably, what I call pluralist naïve realism. (shrink)

Initial moves to develop a new generation of commercial supersonic transports to succeed Concorde are already under way. Aircraft manufacturers promise a plane that will withstand both economic and environmental scrutiny. Yet, the crash of an Air France Concorde at Paris in July 2000 has caused further doubts about the viability of SSTs. This study revisits the previous debate surrounding Concorde to explore the potential for current initiatives to overcome the public’s anxiety of further environmental degradation. This article seeks, therefore, (...) to examine the role that environmental issues and campaign groups played in the development of the first generation of SSTs, concentrating on the influence of global environmental arguments on political decision making. Debate surrounding the global environmental impact of SSTs foreshadows later attention to human impact at the planetary scale. It provides the first illustration of the often complex links between attempted protection of the global environment and political and public perceptions of national vested interests. (shrink)

This paper examines various nineteenth-century appropriations of classical Protestantism, the age of post-Reformation confessionalization and orthodoxy. I focus on an important source from the 1850s, namely Isaak AugustDorner’s famed essay on the problemof divine immutability. Though Karl Barth and others fixated on Dorner’s constructive arguments for God’s immutability in ethical and not metaphysical or essential terms, the role that Dorner assigned to the seventeenth-century Lutheran scholastic Johann Andreas Quenstedt remains neglected. I contextualize Dorner’s essay and stance toward classical Protestantism and (...) argue that he rhetorically obfuscated Quenstedt’s discussion of the claim that God does not change. At the same time, his own interaction withQuenstedt belied his statements to the effect that the dogmatic works of the seventeenth century were outdated. Dorner’s essay thus serves as an insightful case study into the complex and myriad ways in which Protestant theologians of Europe’s revolutionary era viewed seventeenth- century Lutheran and Reformed sources both critically and constructively. (shrink)

Theology and the University in Nineteenth-Century Germany examines the dual transformation of institutions and ideas that led to the emergence of theology as science, the paradigmatic project of modern theology associated with Friedrich Schleiermacher. Beginning with earlier educational reforms across central Europe and especially following the upheavals of the Napoleonic period, an impressive list of provocateurs, iconoclasts, and guardians of the old faith all confronted the nature of the university, the organization of knowledge, and the unity of theology's various parts, (...) quandaries which together bore the collective name of 'theological encyclopedia'. Schleiermacher's remarkably influential programme pioneered the structure and content of the theological curriculum and laid the groundwork for theology's historicization. Zachary Purvis offers a comprehensive investigation of Schleiermacher's programme through the era's two predominant schools: speculative theology and mediating theology. Purvis highlights that the endeavour ultimately collapsed in the context of Wilhelmine Germany and the Weimar Republic, beset by the rise of religious studies, radical disciplinary specialization, a crisis of historicism, and the attacks of dialectical theology. In short, the project represented university theology par excellence. Engaging in detail with these developments, Purvis weaves the story of modern university theology into the broader tapestry of German and European intellectual culture, with periodic comparisons to other national contexts. In doing so, he Purvis presents a substantially new way to understand the relationship between theology and the university, both in nineteenth-century Germany and, indeed, beyond. (shrink)

Derek Allan presented a paper at the 2016 OSSA Conference at the University of Windsor; I provided comments on that paper. These are brief notes on my comments.

Minichromosome maintenance (Mcm) proteins are well‐known for their functions in DNA replication. However, their roles in chromosome segregation are yet to be reviewed in detail. Following the discovery in 1984, a group of Mcm proteins, known as the ARS‐nonspecific group consisting of Mcm13, Mcm16‐19, and Mcm21‐22, were characterized as bonafide kinetochore proteins and were shown to play significant roles in the kinetochore assembly and high‐fidelity chromosome segregation. This review focuses on the structure, function, and evolution of this group of Mcm (...) proteins. Our in silico analysis of the physical interactors of these proteins reveals that they share non‐overlapping functions despite being copurified in biochemically stable complexes. We have discussed the contrasting results reported in the literature and experimental strategies to address them. Taken together, this review focuses on the structure‐function of the ARS‐nonspecific Mcm proteins and their evolutionary flexibility to maintain genome stability in various organisms. (shrink)

Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Entstehung und die Wirkung von Luther an unsere Zeit, Karl Gottlieb Bretschneiders vielgelesenes Buch der Auszüge, als Fallstudie darüber, wie moderne wissenschaftliche Theologen und Herausgeber Luther gelesen, kommentiert und anderen Lesern vorgestellt haben: in diesem Beispiel als Rationalist. Das Buch war umstritten. Der Beitrag befasst sich auch mit zwei konkurrierenden Auswahlen von Luthers Schriften, die von den konservativeren Protestanten Friedrich Perthes und Hans Lorenz Andreas Vent sowie den ultramontanen Katholiken Nikolaus Weis und Andreas Räß als Antwort (...) verfasst wurden. Es deutet darauf hin, dass eine stärkere Berücksichtigung solcher Zusammenstellungen und der Arbeitsmethoden der Compiler selbst – als Teil der kritischen Geschichte der Wissenschaft – sowohl unser Verständnis des tatsächlichen Einsatzes der Reformer und ihrer breiten Rezeption durch verschiedene Leser bereichern als auch neues Licht werfen wird über die Polemik des frühen neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. This article examines the creation and impact of Luther for Our Time, Karl Gottlieb Bretschneider’s much-read book of excerpts, as a case study of how modern scientific theologians and editors read, annotated, and introduced Luther to other readers: in this instance as a rationalist. The book was controversial. The article also looks at two competing selections of Luther’s texts prepared in response by the more conservative Protestants Friedrich Perthes and Hans Lorenz Andreas Vent and the ultramontane Catholics Nikolaus Weis and Andreas Räß. It suggests that greater consideration of such compilations and the working methods of the compilers themselves – part of the critical history of scholarship – will both enrich our understanding of the actual use of reformers and their broad reception by various readers, as well as shed new light on the polemics of the early nineteenth century. (shrink)

In this paper, I advance a new hypothesis about what the ordinary concept of perceptual experience might be. To a first approximation, my hypothesis is that it is the concept of something that seems to present mind-independent objects. Along the way, I reveal two important errors in Michael Martin’s argument for the very different view that the ordinary concept of perceptual experience is the concept of something that is impersonally introspectively indiscriminable from a veridical perception. This conceptual work is significant (...) because it provides three pieces of good news for the common kind theorist. (shrink)

Most contemporary theories of perception, including leading forms of representationalism and naive realism, are monistic: they assume that to consciously perceive is to deploy only one kind of sensory awareness. Here I instead argue for rich pluralism, which says that to consciously perceive is to deploy two very different kinds of sensory awareness in concert: representational awareness of particulars, and non-representational, partly essence-revealing awareness of sensory qualities.

In this paper, I offer a new argument for the perceptual rationality thesis: the claim that perceptual experiences themselves can be rational or irrational. In her book The Rationality of Perception, Susanna Siegel has offered several intertwined arguments for this same thesis, and, as you will see, one of Siegel’s arguments is what inspires my own. However, I will suggest that the new argument is significantly better-supported than Siegel’s original argument.

Using Canada as a case study, this article argues that regulating biotechnology and nanotechnology is made unnecessarily complex and inherently unstable because of a failure to consult the public early and of-ten enough. Furthermore, it is argued that future regulators (and promoters) of nanotechnology may learn valuable lessons from the mistakes made in regulating biotechnology.

Florida is currently collecting data on the “costs of uncompensated care for aliens who are not lawfully present in the U.S.” (Statutes of Florida, 2023). The Florida data collection law, enacted in 2023, is part of aggressive anti-immigrant legislation. Hospitals accepting Medicaid must inquire about patients’ immigration status and submit de-identified reports. In August 2024, the Governor of Texas signed an Executive Order comparable to the Florida statute. Although presented as a data-collection measure, the legal requirements have far-reaching consequences. The (...) potential adverse impacts on immigrants’ health pose bioethical concerns. Immigration-related inquiries create barriers to healthcare access and advance care planning, exacerbating healthcare disparities and presenting ethical concerns. This article examines the effects on immigrants and the resulting ethical challenges, including respect for persons, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. The article proposes recommendations for mitigating these challenges, including community outreach, patient education, policy development, in-service education, and advocacy. While the legal requirements apply specifically to Florida and Texas, the ethical issues have nationwide relevance. (shrink)

Sociologists of science and others have long been interested in how advances in science come about, and their potential social and economic impacts. Developments in nanoscience and nanotechnology will provide social scientists with a unique opportunity to explore how scientific activities form de novo. Additionally, scientists will have the opportunity to examine the factors that drive science and technology in certain directions by considering how different models of innovation may explain how the topography of the knowledge-based economy is being shaped (...) by radically new approaches to science. (shrink)

I defend a subjective representationalist theory of phenomenal experience. On this view, phenomenal experiences are simply certain kinds of representations of subjective (i.e., suitably mind-dependent) physical properties of environmental objects or of one’s body. Chapter 1 focuses on the thoroughly spatial character of experience. Here I argue against views of experience according to which phenomenal properties – roughly, the properties which constitute “what it’s like” to have an experience – are internal to the subject’s mind. If my arguments succeed, then (...) phenomenal properties are outside the subject’s mind. Representationalists typically embrace this claim. Chapter 2 quickly recapitulates some well-known motivations for representationalism and then considers an important choice point for representationalists: are phenomenal properties objective (essentially mind-independent) or subjective (essentially mind-dependent)? I introduce a robust set of inversion intuitions and argue that subjective representationalism, which holds that some phenomenal properties are subjective, can better accommodate such intuitions than objective representationalism. Chapter 3 focuses on the familiar “explanatory gap” problem. I consider a recent version of this argument which concludes that phenomenal consciousness is not reducible to the physical. Since the version of subjective representationalism I hold is part of just such an attempt to reduce phenomenal consciousness to the physical, I spend this chapter developing the resources to respond to Chalmers’ argument. Chapter 4 considers the intuition that internal twins must have precisely the same kinds of phenomenal experiences. This intuition is widespread, powerful, and recalcitrant. But it is very likely that representationalism, especially of the highly externalist sort that I defend in Chapter 1, is incompatible with such intuitions. I argue that this intuition is unreliable and attempt to debunk it. Chapter 5 very tentatively fills in some details of the subjective representationalist account. Representationalists can be sorted into first-order and higher-order theorists. Roughly, first-order representationalists hold that a ground-level representation of a certain kind suffices for phenomenal experience, while higher-order representationalists insist that phenomenal experiences also require a higher-order representation of the ground-level representations. I am tempted by the first-order view on grounds of parsimony. In this chapter, I rebut just one recent, introspectively-based argument for higher-order representationalism. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 51, Issue 5, Page 53-55, September‐October 2021.

_Reinventing Film Studies_ Edited by Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams London: Arnold Publishers, 2000 ISBN 0-340-67723-6 464 pp.

The enduring appeal of liberalism lies in its commitment to the idea that human beings have a "natural" potential to live as free and equal individuals. The realization of this potential, however, is not a matter of nature, but requires that people be molded by a complex constellation of political and educational institutions. In this eloquent and provocative book, Uday Singh Mehta investigates in the major writings of John Locke the implications of this tension between individuals and the institutions (...) that mold them. The process of molding, he demonstrates, involves an external conformity and an internal self-restraint that severely limit the scope of individuality. Mehta explores the centrality of the human imagination in Locke's thought, focusing on his obsession with the potential dangers of the cognitive realm. Underlying Locke's fears regarding the excesses of the imagination is a political anxiety concerning how to limit their potential effects. In light of Locke's views on education, Mehta concludes that the promise of liberation at the heart of liberalism is vitiated by its constraints on cognitive and political freedom. (shrink)

Gujarat has been identified as an enterpreneurial hub of India, primarily due to the innovative behaviour of Gujarati entrepreneurs. This has led Gujarat to become known as a model of enterpreneurial innovations. This model of enterpreneurial innovations has been developed from a study of entrepreneurs in a variety of industries from the region and several industrial clusters of enterprises in Gujarat. The study points to the transformation of many communities, particularly the Patel community, which was traditionally an agricultural community, into (...) a manufacturing class and a new emergent in Gujarat’s industrial scenario. (shrink)