Sri Aurobindo is one of the most prominent figures in the Indian Philosophy of twentieth century and yet we barely find any mention of his work in the philosophy circles. He has written extensively on metaphysics, aesthetics, and ethics. Sri Aurobindo’s work is all-encompassing and carries marks of a deep yogic insight into both the individual self (with all its parts and their integrated working) and the universe that ultimately shares a relation of identity with the individual in secret. He (...) talks about a world-process that contains evolution qualified with involution. It is one of the most unique features of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy. He deals with the questions of ignorance also in the most satisfying way. Sri Aurobindo has an integral vision that sees everything in the movement of one and develops the methods and practices of Integral Yoga. In his yogic vision, he not only tries to solve the problems of humanity but also attempts to make a very bold move of transforming the whole earthly existence into a divine existence through one large stride. The epistemological discussion we find in his work is deeply connected with his metaphysics. He articulates the limits and extents of reason and senses and attempts to surpass them. Sri Aurobindo is not an armchair philosopher; he attempts to salvage the human condition by empowering humanity to consciously guide the march of human evolution towards a divine future. The boldness of his vision, the originality of his philosophical work is spectacular. In this paper, I will discuss his World-process, i.e. the evolution qualified with involution. I will also discuss the epistemological foundation of his philosophy, cosmology and integral yoga psychology. For the sake of clarity in understanding, the paper is divided into five major sections starting with an introduction. Integralism is a central idea in Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy and I have tried to do justice with it throughout this paper. In the end, the paper attempts to deals with three main themes—cosmology, integral yoga psychology and integral experience. All these three themes shall bring out—The integral experience of Sri Aurobindo is deeply intertwined with his cosmology and yogic psychology and shall not be seen in isolation. Integral experience of reality is also intertwined and works in tandem with his Integral Yoga. There is a yogic exploration of oneness between the self and world that informs and shapes both his philosophical and yogic endeavors. The rationale behind undertaking this study is to question whether the observations of the physical world from the standpoint of yogic experience could suggest some new theoretical framework for the metaphysical ontology of the world. Taking perspectives from the states of consciousness described by Sri Aurobindo may furnish us with a deeper understanding of the material and metaphysical character of physical categories, such as matter, energy, force, space, and time. This paper however is an introductory overview of Aurobindo’s relevance for cosmology, psychology and integral experience which provides a philosophical framework to reinterpret and arrive at a synthetic metaphysics. (shrink)

The automatic verification of large parts of mathematics has been an aim of many mathematicians from Leibniz to Hilbert. While Gödel's first incompleteness theorem showed that no computer program could automatically prove certain true theorems in mathematics, the advent of electronic computers and sophisticated software means in practice there are many quite effective systems for automated reasoning that can be used for checking mathematical proofs. This book describes the use of a computer program to check the proofs of several celebrated (...) theorems in metamathematics including those of Gödel and Church-Rosser. The computer verification using the Boyer-Moore theorem prover yields precise and rigorous proofs of these difficult theorems. It also demonstrates the range and power of automated proof checking technology. The mechanization of metamathematics itself has important implications for automated reasoning, because metatheorems can be applied as labor-saving devices to simplify proof construction. (shrink)

​Renowned spiritual teacher, global humanitarian, and tireless advocate for peace Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has changed the lives of millions of people around the world for the better. Yet many in the West have not been introduced to his profound and practical approach to living a spiritual life. This book will change that. In June of 1995, Gurudev began a weekly tradition of creating a short talk, often on a subject that was relevant to current events or in (...) response to questions posed by audiences at his international gatherings. What resulted were powerful words of wisdom; much celebration, laughter, lightheartedness; and messages of inspiration and encouragement. Notes for the Journey Within is a collection of those transcribed talks, spanning almost a decade. Gurudev's teachings can make a huge difference in how you live your life, interact with your family, friends, and coworkers, and understand your spiritual path and how you walk it. This extraordinary compilation of insights can help you on your journey within, to that all-encompassing love, joy, and peace at your core! (shrink)

This article contributes to debates concerning the sexualization of culture in the European context by analysing shifts in contemporary forms of British women’s sexual sexual subjectivities in relation to consumer culture. The article employs a ‘heterotopological’ analysis of how space is materialized through history, power and discourse. A two-part analysis is employed that, first, maps the history of British sex shops in relation to two discourses of sexuality and consumption, namely ‘safe’ and ‘seedy’; and second, analyses how these discourses can (...) be taken up and negotiated by young women today, as evidenced in a focus group discussion on ‘Ann Summers’. It concludes that new directions and interesting insights into the intersections of space, power, gender and sexuality within neoliberal postfeminist shifts in feminine identity can be made by considering female-oriented sex shops as ‘postfeminist heterotopias’. (shrink)

Providing people with information is considered an important first step in encouraging them to behave sustainably as it influences their consumption beliefs, attitudes and intentions. However, too much information can also complicate these processes and negatively affect behaviour. This is exacerbated when people have accepted the need to live a more sustainable lifestyle and attempt to enact its principles. Drawing on interview data with people committed to sustainability, we identify the contentious role of knowledge in further disrupting sustainable consumption ideals. (...) Here, knowledge is more than just information; it is familiarity and expertise or how information is acted upon. We find that more knowledge represents a source of dilemma, tension and paralysis. Our data reveal a dark side to people’s knowledge, leading to a ‘self-inflicted sustainable consumption paradox’ in their attempts to lead a sustainable consumption lifestyle. Implications for policy interventions are discussed. (shrink)

Human resources are an evitable resource for achieving organizational goals. Human resources are no longer merely a factor of production but now play a crucial role in successful organizations. Every employee represents a bouquet of Competencies or talent. Many organizations view Human Resource Management as Talent Management. This study examines the relationship between talent analytics and employee retention. Talent analytics encompasses the processes, strategies, and technologies used to manage HR operations in an organization. Talent Analytics encompasses data-driven decision-making and analysis. (...) Attrition among workers is the opposite of employee retention. Talent Analytics may favourably impact several aspects of Talent Management, including recruitment, training, retention, career promotion, and redeployment. solutions. Many organisations can use historical data to forecast future outcomes. Employees who frequently visit job sites are more likely to leave the organisation for better opportunities. An employee with a large number of unresolved professional grievances may depart the organisation. Over 250 employees in the industrial sector provided feedback on the use of Talent Analytics. All of these responders are from Chennai. Data research revealed that most respondents believe Talent Analytics improves employee retention. The researcher investigated the relationship between the availability of a Talent Analytics System in a respondent's organisation and their intention to stay. (shrink)

This study notes three research requirements in workplace spirituality namely; need for conducting empirical studies, building on the existing research, and linking spirituality to organizational topics in general and leadership in particular. It also notes that the existing literature indicates a requirement for examining the spiritual sources of a leader’s spiritual behaviors toward subordinates. To address these research requirements in workplace spirituality, this study conducts an empirical examination of the effect of two spiritual factors—leader’s individual spirituality and organizational spirituality—on leadership (...) spiritual behaviors toward subordinates. It specifies and empirically examines a direct effects model hypothesizing direct effects of these two variables on a leader’s spiritual behaviors toward subordinates. It also specifies and empirically examines a moderating effect model hypothesizing that organizational spirituality will moderate the relationship between a leader’s individual spirituality and the leader’s spiritual behaviors toward subordinates. The results of this study provided support for the direct effects model but not for the moderating effect model. Specifically, in the direct effects model, a leader’s individual spirituality accounted for statistically significant variance in leadership spiritual behaviors toward subordinates but organizational spirituality did not. (shrink)

Recent work suggests that DNA replication origins are regulated by the number of multiple mini‐chromosome maintenance (MCM) complexes loaded. Origins are defined by the loading of MCM – the replicative helicase which initiates DNA replication and replication kinetics determined by origin's location and firing times. However, activation of MCM is heterogeneous; different origins firing at different times in different cells. Also, more MCMs are loaded in G1 than are used in S phase. These aspects of MCM biology are explained by (...) the observation that multiple MCMs are loaded at origins. Having more MCMs at early origins makes them more likely to fire, effecting differences in origin efficiency that define replication timing. Nonetheless, multiple MCM loading raises new questions, such as how they are loaded, where these MCMs reside at origins, and how their presence affects replication timing. In this review, we address these questions and discuss future avenues of research. (shrink)

Karl Raimund Popper, (1902-1994) a leading apostle of antiinductivism, holds that the main problem of philosophy of science is the problem of demarcation. Accordingly, the demarcation principle distinguishes science from non-science. To Popper, logic, metaphysics and psychoanalysis are likely to fall into the non-science group. Principle of induction has been accepted even though resentfully as the chief tool of scientific investigation by the positivists as well as the scientists in general. Popper rejects the positivistic approach and on the contrary proposes (...) falsifiablity to furnish his iconoclastic project. This paper intends to indentify the problem of his very approaches in order to hold that in spite of some difficulties in the problem of induction itself, as the identifier of science, we do not have any alternative to save science from metaphysics. Finally, Popper’s so-called demarcation criterion is extensively examined here with a view to defend material aspect of inductive generalization. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#67-68; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2020 P 33-48. (shrink)

The study aims to address the existing research gap through a thematic comparison between the aesthetics of Kant and Abhinavagupta. This paper explores Kant’s notion of aesthetic judgment based on disinterestedness with Abhinavagupta’s analysis of sādhāraṇīkaraṇa. We argue that the notions of “disinterested judgment” in Kant and sādhāraṇīkaraṇa in Abhinavagupta points towards the impersonal nature of aesthetic delight which makes the universality of aesthetic experience possible. Hence, aesthetics in both Kant and Abhinavgupta are not the personal and subjective experience but (...) a kind of universality based on the ability to experience the impersonal joy. However, the notion of aesthetic delight in Kant is confined to the agreeable mental states only while in Abhinavgupta the notion of rasa includes both positive as well as the negative mental states like fear, disgust, etc. In this regard, the paper will also analyze the affinity between notion of sensus communius in Kant and sahṛdaya in Abhinavagupta which highlights the importance of aesthetic community and the impersonal nature of aesthetic delight. (shrink)

As the title of the present article shows, it highlights the three philosophically integrated areas – (1) pramāṇa-epistemology (theory of comprehensive knowledge involving both perception and inference), (2) logic (although a part of pramāṇa-epistemology, it has two modes, namely, inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning), and (3) language (or semantics, i.e. the double negation theory of meaning, which falls under inference). These are interconnected as well as overlapping within the Buddhist mainstream tradition of the process philosophy as opposed to the substantialist (...) philosophy. The same is the case with the three celebrated Buddhist thinkers – Vasubandhu, Dignāga (also spelt as Diññāṇa), and Dharmakīrti – who develop their radical and critical views focusing on these areas in historical-cum-philosophical order. It is worth noting that within the same mainstream Buddhist tradition, each one of the three thinkers picks up the problematic issues from their predecessors – from the Buddha to their immediate predecessors respectively – for their solutions against the backdrop of the two conflicting mainstream traditions – Buddhist and non-Buddhist. The central focus of these thinkers is first to identify the crucial issues, doctrinal principles, terminology, and methodology in their own ways and conceptual frameworks, which generate not only the mutual conflicts in the course of dialogues but also strengthen their positions by means of their new radical ideas, innovations, terminologies, methodologies, and doctrinal principles. As a result, the three selected areas and their crucial issues are explained, elaborated, and interpretated for better understanding. All of which are rooted in the Buddha’s path of wisdom, ethics, and liberation from the human predicament (duḥkha-nivṛtti). In this grand project of the deepest concerns, the Buddha utilized multiple strategies like understanding and controlling the problematic nature of the mind (Pāli citta, manasa) and its concomitance (Pāli cetasika, dhammā) by means of the concentrative meditation (Pāli jhāna, Sanskrit (hereafter Skt., dhyāna), cultivation of knowledge (Pāli vijjā, Skt. vidyā) and conduct/moral purity (Pāli caraṇa, Skt. ācaraṇa), destruction of afflictions/defilements (Pāli kilesa, Skt. kleśa), critical and logical thinking with valid arguments, and so on. His disciples also treat him as the possessor of valid method, arguments, meaning, practice, and purpose (Skt. pramāṇabhūta, the term used by Dignāga). He believed in the common humanity as the community of sufferers and the autonomy of every human being (Pāli attakāra), but strongly rejected the hierarchy of humanity on the basis of caste, birth, and dogmatic religious identity. For these reasons, following the Buddha and his celebrated followers like Vasubandhu, Dignāga, and Dharmakīrti, my task in this article is how to clearly and elaborately discuss the above identified issues and theories, first to understand them for myself and then logically prove the whole process of knowledge and the designed purpose through communication to those who have the intention to hear and understand the framework of common language for their benefits. I wish the readers like students and young teachers benefit from my research work. Further, since my learning of the Tibetan language is zero, but comfortable in Sanskrit and Pāli, I have been heavily dependent on three great modern thinkers who have widely written independently and also translated the Buddhist Tibetan texts, which were translated from the original Sanskrit texts now lost, into English in the areas of Buddhist epistemology, logic, and semantics. These modern scholars are Masaaki Hattori, Shoryo Katsura, and Richard Hayes. Besides them, I have also little benefitted from some other scholars who have worked in the same areas. (shrink)

The Trika school, which is popularly known as Pratyabhijñā-darśana or Kashmir Śaivism is an absolutist and theistic school of Śaivism in the 9th Century. For the Trika school, the self is synonymous with pure consciousness, equated with Śiva. The path elaborated by the school is from self-ignorance to the realisation of pure consciousness. The Trika philosophy strives to answer two fundamental and interrelated questions. Firstly, understanding oneself as a reduced form of Śiva? Secondly, how does an individual attain “Śivatva”? In (...) this study, we explicate answers to these queries by resorting to the metaphysics of the Trika school along with interpretative textual analysis and present a model proposed by Bhoja Raja based on the three guṇas. This model attributed to Sāṅkhya philosophy and puruṣārtha could help to place the metaphysics of upāya in Trika philosophy in the context of the question of attaining “Śivatva”. (shrink)

This book, through extensive textual study, explores the Buddha's and Buddhism's uncompromising and unflinching emphasis on the centrality of ethics as against any pernicious dogmas and metaphysical beliefs, and their attempts to causally relate moral perfection to soteriological or eschatological goal. What is most admirable about Buddhism is that it integrates the vertical development of human consciousness, for which the other is the necessary condition, with the gradual development of morality. It was this emphasis which separated Siddhartha, before he attained (...) the Awakened Wisdom (bodhi), from his teachers - Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta - and it is for this reason that the Buddha calls himself and his Dhamma Patisotagami, i.e. going against the currents of the prevailing dogmas and pernicious beliefs. In brief, Buddhism is about overcoming of suffering, the greatest evil, through ethicization of human consciousness and conduct, which also takes care of the ethicization of the society and the universe. Besides, some of the essays of this book explore many other themes like Buddhist epistemology, nature of self, time, and intercultural. (shrink)

We conduct an experiment to investigate the joint effects of advisor reassurance and advice source in enhancing the impact of advice on auditors’ whistleblowing propensity. Participants from a Big 4 firm assess the likelihood that a questionable act involving a superior will be reported, both before and after receiving advice. We manipulate, between-participants, the advice source and advisor reassurance on the firm’s policy on whistleblower protection, holding constant the advice recommendation. Our study is underpinned by the premise that moral agents (...) may require an impetus to do the right thing in the form of advice whose effects may vary by its source and nature. Results are consistent with our hypothesis. Specifically, while auditors’ propensity to report a questionable act increases after receiving advice, the increase is significantly higher when the advice is received with reassurance on whistleblower protection than without reassurance, with the effect of reassurance being greater when the advice is from an authoritative source than from a non-authoritative source. These results underscore the importance of advice in promoting whistleblowing and demonstrate how the impact of advice is jointly determined by its source and reassurance on whistleblower protection. (shrink)

Prolific research suggests identity associates with pro-environmental behaviours that are individual and/or group focused. Individual PEB is personally driven, self-reliant, and are conducted on one's own. Group focused PEB is other people-reliant and completed as part of a group. A wide range of identities have been related to PEBs. For example, a recent systematic qualitative review revealed 99 different types of identities studied in a PEB context. Most studies were correlational, few had an experimental design. However, the relationships between all (...) these identities and PEBs have so far not been tested quantitatively with meta-analytical techniques. As such, a clear overview of this field is currently lacking. Due to the diverse nature of the field, a priori hypotheses were not possible and relatively broad definitions of identity had to be used to encompass all types of identities and the diverse meanings of identity that have been included in PEB research. What prior theory did allow for was to assess the distinction between two main types of identity, namely how people label, describe, and recognise oneself individually, or as part of a group. Our overall goal was thus to assess the current state of knowledge on identities and PEBs. In 104 studies using a meta-regression following the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses guidelines, our random-effects meta-analysis showed that the overall concept of identity associated with PEB with a medium Pearson's r. Furthermore, we found that individual identities associated more strongly with PEBs than group identities. The associations between individual and group identities were stronger when the identity and PEB were from the same category. Methodologically, the findings revealed that group identities and group PEBs were most strongly associated for self-reported rather than observed PEBs. Overall identity associated most strongly with group PEBs in the field rather than in the lab and in student- rather than non-student samples. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)

During the Twentieth Century, either before or after the Independence, India produced several saints. Many of these saints have preached and still preach a religion of love and devotion, the bhakti. Nowadays, many of the bhakti movements they have created are still active and other new movements are being born with the emergence of new saint-figures. Among all these modern movements, The Art of Living Foundation is the most recent one, and one of the most active today. Founded in 1982 (...) by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar who is believed by his followers to be the embodiment of divine love, The Art of Living Foundation claims to possess the “keys” to a better living. Indeed, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's movement offers courses of yoga and meditation worldwide to share its precious wisdom with the widest public, regardless of walks of life, religions, societies and cultures of the aspirants. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's yoga techniques and main messages as “Life is sacred ; celebrate life” attract an ever-growing public, be it in India, in America, or anywhere else. In spite of the fact that The Art of Living Foundation is present all over the world, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and his movement remain not very much known among the scholarly circles, especially outside the Indian subcontinent. So, the present study, based on observation and analysis of the movement, will introduce Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and his movement in a critical way by comparing The Art of Living Foundation with the other modern Hindu bhakti movements, highlighting and critiquing the salient features it tries to enshrine. (shrink)

Venkataramanaiah, V. Introduction.--Narla, V. R. Russell and his rejection of religion.--Mehta, G. L. The sceptical crusader.--Dalvi, G. R. Russell, the man.--Venkatarao, V. The nuclear war and the future of man.--Innaiah, N. Bertrand Russell's philosophy.--Subbarayudu, P. Rationality vis-a-vis faith.--Nageswar Rao, B. Russell and nuclear warfare.--Rajagopala Rao, M. Rebel in Russell.--Shankar, G. N. J. The man who revolutionised modern thought.--Maharajasri. Russell, the social scientist in the four-dimensional universe.--The life of Bertrand Russell.--Acknowledgements.--A list of principal works of Bertrand Russell.--Russell's conception of good (...) society in a democratic socialist order.--Objects. (shrink)

The first major work in the history of philosophy to bear the title "Metaphysics" was the treatise by Aristotle that we have come to know by that name. But Aristotle himself did not use that title or even describe his field of study as 'metaphysics'; the name was evidently coined by the first century C.E. editor who assembled the treatise we know as Aristotle's Metaphysics out of various smaller selections of Aristotle's works. The title 'metaphysics' -- literally, 'after the Physics' (...) -- very likely indicated the place the topics discussed therein were intended to occupy in the philosophical curriculum. They were to be studied after the treatises dealing with nature (ta phusika). In this entry, we discuss the ideas that are developed in Aristotle's treatise. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Art and SelectionBrian BoydArt Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution, by Denis Dutton; 279 pp. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009, $25.00. Oxford: Oxford University Press, £16.99.In the interests of full disclosure: Denis Dutton, the author of The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution, not only edits this journal but has also published here a number of my essays. We share enthusiasms and aversions, but we also now and (...) again disagree. And we both enjoy spirited discussion, which is why I asked him if I might review his book for this journal. Now can we begin?Ellen Dissanayake, the first to take a modern evolutionary approach to art, in her What Is Art For? (1988), doubts that sexual selection can explain much about art. After all, she notes, men can compete about anything, even about who can pee the highest.1 Denis Dutton, the first philosopher to take a sustained evolutionary approach to the arts, suggests that much in art arises from sexual selection—and he spends a good deal of time discussing and dismissing the kind of philosophy of art that orients itself around the urinal that Marcel Duchamp christened Fountain.Dutton begins by reporting recent research into the universality of human landscape preferences. Although these preferences explain little about art in the round, they vividly demonstrate the link between human emotions and preferences across cultures now and human survival [End Page 204] needs thousands of generations ago. In chapter 2, Dutton shows that although recent philosophers of art have not sought to ground art in human nature, that has been an aim of their predecessors from Aristotle to Hume and Kant.But Dutton really starts with the intuitions that art seems a fundamentally similar pursuit around the world, and that artworks like Duchamp's Fountain or Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes should not be central to our thinking about art, even if they have been central for prominent philosophers of art like George Dickie and Arthur Danto. Dutton stresses that we can appreciate art across cultures. He did so himself when he lived in India while in the Peace Corps, and, an accomplished pianist, learned the sitar from a student of Ravi Shankar, or later, when he lived by the Sepik River in northern Papua New Guinea to ascertain whether "local criteria for beautiful art agree with what Western aficionados and connoisseurs of Sepik art call beautiful. My conclusion was unequivocal: Sepik standards of beauty closely match the opinions of Western experts, including curators and collectors who enjoy a wide experience with Sepik museum collections but who have never set foot in the country" (p. 11).As this passage makes clear, Dutton is not your average armchair academic analytical aesthetician—thank goodness. Unlike the typical professional philosopher of art, he does not hide behind the porcupine quills of philosophese, good for defense and a certain kind of bristly display but utterly rebarbative. Like that other maverick philosopher, Daniel Dennett, he instead engages with work, the world, and readers outside his discipline.Dutton argues convincingly for the need to focus first on indisputable examples of art rather than on problematic cases, just as discussions of murder should not begin with assisted suicide, abortion or capital punishment (p. 50). One of his best chapters offers a cluster concept of art, a dozen features shared by the most unequivocal art. Doubtful cases will satisfy fewer than the full checklist, but there is no fixed threshold, no necessary and sufficient number of criteria. And no criterion by itself distinguishes art from non-art. Indeed one of the most fascinating aspects of his cluster concept is that, for each criterion, he parenthetically notes examples elsewhere in human life that would satisfy that criterion but that nobody would consider art. Skill and virtuosity, for instance, he insists on as features of the indisputably artful, but he adds also: "High skill is a source of pleasure and admiration in every area of human activity beyond art, perhaps most notably today in sports. [End Page 205] Almost every regularized human activity can be turned competitive in order to emphasize the development and admiration of its technical, skill aspect. Guinness World Records... (shrink)

Hegel’s basic position so far on the various meanings of evil as necessary and thereby intelligible directly in the development of spirit might be summed up as follows. Evil is always a necessary moment of instability which gives impetus in the movement from various meanings of particularity to various meanings of universality; from the more abstract expression of potential unity and truth to the more actualized notion and unity.

Clarke proposes a conception of philosophy that provides an alternative to the reductions of materialism and the search for normative principles. Philosophy's proper role is to describe similarities and differences among differing levels of language, specifically the familiar level of discourse within an ordinary language shared by all and the specialized discourses of social institutions such as science, law, and the arts. By constructing a logical framework in which these comparisons and contrasts can be made, philosophy performs the indispensable role (...) of promoting the integration of disparate elements of our culture. (shrink)

This book aims to give a coherent interpretation of the whole dialogue, paying particular attention to these etymologies.The book discusses the rival theories ...

The relationship of man himself to his environment is an inseparable part of ecology; for he also is an organism and other organisms are a part of his environment. Ecology, therefore, broadly conceived and rightly understood, instead of being an academic science merely, out of touch with humanistic interests, is really that part of every other biological science which brings it into immediate relation to human kind. The proper place of humans in ecological study has been a recurring issue for (...) ecology. Of course humans are part of Nature writ large, but are they part of the ecologist's nature? The question bothered biologists even before the discipline of ecology was firmly institutionalized.... (shrink)

In Seeing Things as They Are (Searle 2015), Searle developed a direct realist’s theory of perception. According to direct realism, physical objects are directly and immediately perceived. Searle claims that Berkeley’s theory of perception goes against direct realism. For Searle, Berkeley’s theory suggests that only subjective experiences (ideas) are directly and immediately perceived, not physical objects. Contrary to Searle, G. S. Pappas claims that Berkeley’s theory of perception is consistent with the view that physical objects are immediately perceivable (Pappas 1982; (...) Pappas 1987). Given the conflicting interpretations of Berkeley’s theory of perception, this paper attempts to defend Searle’s position on Berkeley’s theory of perception. It refutes Pappas’ interpretation by arguing that he is inconsistent with Berkeley’s theses of ontological phenomenalism and heterogeneity thesis. (shrink)

Taking an analytic and historical approach, this work develops and defends Althusserian critical theory. This theory, it is argued, produces knowledge of how a particular class of people, in a particular time, in a particular place, is dominated, oppressed, or exploited. Moreover, without relying on a general notion of human emancipation, concrete critical theory can suggest political means for the alleviation of these conditions. Because it puts Althusser’s ideas in dialogue with contemporary social science and philosophy, the book as a (...) whole makes contributions to Althusser studies, to Anglo-American political philosophy, and to current debates in the philosophy of the social sciences. (shrink)

Commentary on Śārīrakamīmāṃsābhāṣya of Śaṅkarācārya, work on Vedanta philosophy.

We provide a suitable theoretical foundation for the notion of the quantum coherent state which describes the electrostatic field due to a static external macroscopic charge distribution introduced by the author in 1998 and use it to rederive the formulae obtained in 1998 for the inner product of a pair of such states. (We also correct an incorrect factor of 4π\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$4\pi$$\end{document} in some of those formulae.) Contrary to what one might expect, (...) this inner product is usually non-zero whenever the total charges of the two charge distributions are equal, even if the charge distributions themselves are different. We actually display two different frameworks that lead to the same inner-product formulae, in the second of which Gauss’s law only holds in expectation value. We propose an experiment capable of ruling out the latter framework. We then address the problem of finding a product picture for QED—i.e. a reformulation in which it has a total Hamiltonian, arising as a sum of a free electromagnetic Hamiltonian, a free charged-matter Hamiltonian and an interaction term, acting on a Hilbert space which is a subspace (the physical subspace) of the full tensor product of a charged-matter Hilbert space and an electromagnetic-field Hilbert space. (The traditional Coulomb gauge formulation of QED isn’t a product picture in this sense because, in it, the longitudinal part of the electric field is a function of the charged matter operators.) Motivated by the first framework for our coherent-state construction, we find such a product picture and exhibit its equivalence with Coulomb gauge QED both for a charged Dirac field and also for a system of non-relativistic charged balls. For each of these systems, in all states in the physical subspace (including the vacuum in the case of the Dirac field) the charged matter is entangled with longitudinal photons and Gauss’s law holds as an operator equation; albeit the electric field operator (and therefore also the full Hamiltonian) while self-adjoint on the physical subspace, fails to be self-adjoint on the full tensor-product Hilbert space. The inner products of our electrostatic coherent states and the product picture for QED are relevant as analogues to quantities that play a rôle in the author’s matter-gravity entanglement hypothesis. Also, the product picture provides a temporal gauge quantization of QED which appears to be free from the difficulties which plagued previous approaches to temporal-gauge quantization. (shrink)