We suffer from genealogical anxiety when we worry that the contingent origins of our representations, once revealed, will somehow undermine or cast doubt on those representations. Is such anxiety ever rational? Many have apparently thought so, from pre-Socratic critics of Greek theology to contemporary evolutionary debunkers of morality. One strategy for vindicating critical genealogies is to see them as undermining the epistemic standing of our representations—the justification of our beliefs, the aptness of our concepts, and so on. I argue that (...) this strategy is not as promising as it might first seem. Instead, I suggest that critical genealogies can wield a sort of meta-epistemic power; in so far as we wish to resist the genealogical critic, we are under pressure to see ourselves as the beneficiaries of a certain kind of good luck: what I call genealogical luck. But there is also a resolutely non-epistemic way of understanding the power of critical genealogies, one that is essential, I argue, for understanding the genealogical projects of various theorists, including Nietzsche and Catharine MacKinnon. For critical genealogies can reveal what it is that our representations do—and what we, in turn, might do with them. (shrink)

This article presents a novel challenge to epistemic internalism. The challenge rests on a set of cases which feature subjects forming beliefs under conditions of “bad ideology”—that is, conditions in which pervasively false beliefs have the function of sustaining, and are sustained by, systems of social oppression. In such cases, the article suggests, the externalistic view that justification is in part a matter of worldly relations, rather than the internalistic view that justification is solely a matter of how things stand (...) from the agent’s individual perspective, becomes the more intuitively attractive theory. But these “bad ideology” cases do not merely yield intuitive verdicts that favor externalism over internalism. These cases are, moreover, analogous to precisely those canonical cases widely taken to be counterexamples to externalism: cases featuring brains-in-vats, clairvoyants, and dogmatists. That is, such “bad ideology” cases are, in all relevant respects, just like cases that are thought to count against externalism—except that they intuitively favor externalism. This, the author argues, is a serious worry for internalism. What is more, it bears on the debate over whether externalism is a genuinely “normative” epistemology. (shrink)

Since its appearance over a decade ago, Timothy Williamson's anti-luminosity argument has come under sustained attack. Defenders of the luminous overwhelmingly object to the argument's use of a certain margin-for-error premise. Williamson himself claims that the premise follows easily from a safety condition on knowledge together with his description of the thought experiment. But luminists argue that this is not so: the margin-for-error premise either requires an implausible interpretation of the safety requirement on knowledge, or it requires other equally implausible (...) assumptions. In this paper I bolster the margin-for-error premise against these attacks by recasting Williamson's own two-part defence, the first part intended to work on the assumption that there is no constitutive connection between the phenomenal and the doxastic, and the second intended to work without this assumption. Pace various luminists, I argue that the appeals to safety needed for Williamson's two-part defence are plausible. I also argue that all that is needed to generate the margin-for-error premise from these safety conditions is an empirical assumption about the kinds of creatures we are: that is, creatures whose beliefs are structured by certain dispositions. By recasting the anti-luminosity argument in this way, we can understand what is really at stake in the debate about luminosity: that is, whether we are luminous. (shrink)

This is a scholarly book on one of the oldest living relgions of India.

Prof. Iyengar's biography of Sri Aurobindo, long a standard reference work, is now in its fifth edition. The author's subtitle indicates the depth and breadth of the book, as it links the life of Sri Aurobindo, who played for our age the crucial role of leader of humanity's evolving destiny , with the history of India and the world. It also provides detailed discussions of Sri Aurobindo's writings, from the early poems and plays to the politics of Bande Mataram, from (...) the philosophy and social thought of the Arya to the epic masterpiece of Savitri, as the essential keys to understanding his life and work. This book is available again after a long time. (shrink)

Over the centuries the nature of erroneous perception has been thoroughly discussed by Indian philosophers of nearly every school. This text aims to pursue important issues in the discussion of perceptual error. It sheds light on why Indian philosophers devoted so much attention to the problem of erroneous perception but also on why the ontological status of the object of error became such an important issue. The result is a history of the interactions among rival theories of perceptual error.

This book presents a comprehensive exposition of Vedanta Desika`s Satadusani, a polemical classic of Visistadvaita Vedanta, devoted to the criticism of the doctrines of Advaita Vedanta. The thought-provoking arguments found in the Sixty-six Vedas of the original text are brought together, analysed and discussed in a systematic manner under eight broad headings: Pramanas Perception; Consciousness; Individual self; Brahman; Universe; Avidya; Sadhana and Mukti.In presenting the dialectics of Vedanta Desika in a vigorous and scholastic form the author deals with numerous issues (...) that the Vadas raise--epistemological, ontological, religious, and ethical. Thought the issues are many, each discussing a specific problem, they are ultimately directed to refute the central doctrine of Advaita, viz., that Brahman which is pure consciousness devoid of all determinations, constitutes the sole Reality and every thing else is illusory. While carefully tracing the fundamental differences between the two systems of Vedanta, he points out that the differences are mostly due to the difference in the stand-points they adopt.Faithfully conforming to the original in letter and spirit, this work will serve as a useful introduction to the study of the Sribhasya of Ramanuja. A distincy contribution to the study of classical Hindu thought, this book should be of interest to students of Philosophy in general and Vedanta in particular. (shrink)

Description: This scholarly work of Dr S.M.S. Chari's deals with the critical review of seventeen philosophical systems as presented in an important philosophical treatise of the thirteenth century titled Paramata-bhanga contributed by Vedanta Desika, an illustrious successor to Ramanuja, who is the chief exponent of Visistadvaita Vedanta. The main objective of Paramata-bhanga is to establish that Visistadvaita is a sound system of philosophy as compared to the several other Non-Vedic as well as Vedic schools and also Vedanta schools developed by (...) Samkara, Yadavaprakasa, Bhaskara, and other exponents of the post-Ramanuja period. The original text written in Manipravala (a mixture of Tamil and Sanskrit) language contains, besides a brief account of the fundamental doctrines of Visistadvaita. The schools covered are Carvaka, Buddhism, Jainism, Sankhya, Yoga, Vaisesika, Nyaya, Purvamimamsa, Pasupata, Sabdabrahma-vivartavada, and Advaita Vedanta. Among the extant philosophical classics, Paramata-bhanga is a unique work. Realizing the importance of the Paramata-bhanga for the comparative study of Indian philosophy, late Dr Chari tried to give a lucid exposition of this treatise in English. This volume, which is the first of its kind, would be invaluable for students of Indian philosophy in general and Visistadvaita in particular. (shrink)

Study of Adhikaraṇasārāvalī of Veṅkaṭanātha, 1268-1369, work on the fundamentals of Viśiṣṭādvaita philosophy.

In the data collection phase, the digital images are captured using sensors that often contaminated by noise (undesired random signal). In digital image processing task, enhancing the image quality and reducing the noise is a central process. Image denoising effectively preserves the image edges to a higher extend in the flat regions. Several adaptive filters (median filter, Gaussian filter, fuzzy filter, etc.) have been utilized to improve the smoothness of digital image, but these filters failed to preserve the image edges (...) while removing noise. In this paper, a modified fuzzy set filter has been proposed to eliminate noise for restoring the digital image. Usually in fuzzy set filter, sixteen fuzzy rules are generated to find the noisy pixels in the digital image. In modified fuzzy set filter, a set of twenty-four fuzzy rules are generated with additional four pixel locations for determining the noisy pixels in the digital image. The additional eight fuzzy rules ease the process of finding the image pixels,whether it required averaging or not. In this scenario, the input digital images were collected from the underwater photography fish dataset. The efficiency of the modified fuzzy set filter was evaluated by varying degrees of Gaussian noise (0.01, 0.03, and 0.1 levels of Gaussian noise). For performance evaluation, Structural Similarity (SSIM), Mean Structural Similarity (MSSIM), Mean Square Error (MSE), Normalized Mean Square Error (NMSE), Universal Image Quality Index (UIQI), Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), and Visual Information Fidelity (VIF) were used. The experimental results showed that the modified fuzzy set filter improved PSNR value up to 2-3 dB, MSSIM up to 0.12-0.03, and NMSE value up to 0.38-0.1 compared to the traditional filtering techniques. (shrink)

Ras homolog enriched in the striatum (Rhes) is a striatal enriched protein that promotes the formation of thin membranous tubes resembling tunneling nanotubes (TNT)—“Rhes tunnels”—that connect neighboring cell and transport cargoes: vesicles and proteins between the neuronal cells. Here the literature on TNT‐like structures is reviewed, and the implications of Rhes‐mediated TNT, the mechanisms of its formation, and its potential in novel cell‐to‐cell communication in regulating striatal biology and disease are emphasized. Thought‐provoking ideas regarding how Rhes‐mediated TNT, if it exists, (...) in vivo, would radically change the way neurons communicate in the brain are discussed. (shrink)

Meena Srinivasan began teaching in order to touch lives, but with the demands of covering her curriculum she all but forgot her aspiration. During a retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh, Meena learned for the first time about mindfulness. In Teach, Breathe, Learn, Srinivasan highlights how mindfulness can be an effective tool in the classroom. What makes this book truly unique is Srinivasan's perspective as a classroom teacher, wrestling daily with the conditions about which she writes. Each chapter (...) begins with a personal narrative concerning a challenge Srinivasan faced during the school day and how a specific mindfulness practice helped. Testimonials from students, colleagues, and parents appear in each chapter, along with a mindfulness practice. Part 1 helps teachers develop compassion and shift from "reacting" to "responding" to demands. Part 2 offers techniques for cultivating loving-kindness and seeing students, colleagues, and parents as oneself. The author shares what research says about the effects of mindfulness practice on academic, social, and emotional learning. The last section of the book introduces the complete curriculum teachers can use to incorporate mindfulness into their classroom, replete with lesson plans, PowerPoint diagrams, handouts, and homework assignments. (shrink)

Many traditions in the East have proposed that consciousness without content is possible and could be achieved with mental training. However, it is not clear whether such a state is possible given that intentionality is a critical property of mentality and consciousness in many theories of consciousness. A prominent recent attempt to account for such states of “minimal phenomenal experience” is the ascending reticular arousal system (ARAS) model, which proposes a specific type of non-conceptual representational content to address such a (...) state. Consciousness without content can also be understood by studying related or similar states of minimal phenomenal experience and this paper discusses such findings from such states including dreamless sleep experience and their implications. One way to argue for the need for proposing consciousness without content is to locate a property of consciousness that would necessitate postulating it. A continuous state of consciousness without content may be needed to understand continuity of conscious experience. Finally, I discuss the implications of consciousness without content for current theories of consciousness. (shrink)

The Buddhist monk Upagupta, who preached and taught meditative practices in Northwest India over two thousand years ago, is venerated today by the laity in ...

Description: The Upanisads which contain lofty philosophical teachings of the great seers constitute the most authoritative sourcebook for the Vedanta system of philosophy. However, there is no unanimity among the ancient exponents of Vedanta regarding the nature of the philosophy adumbrated in the Upanisads. Dr. Chari's scholarly work attempts to make a dispassionate study of the philosophical passages of the fourteen Principal Upanisads by giving due consideration to not only the comments of Samkara, Ramanuja and Madhva, but more importantly, the (...) authoritative views of Badarayana as enshrined in his classic Vedantasutras. In the first part of the book, he presents the important passages of the Upanisads along with English rendering indicating the variations in the interpretation by the three commentators and also discusses their philosophical implications with reference to the Vedanta doctrines developed in the post Upanisadic period. In the second part he has attempted to consolidate the variety of philosophical thoughts scattered all over the Upanisads into coherent doctrines under five broad subjects: Brahman, jivatman, jagat, sadhana, and parama-purusartha. In the final chapter he conclusively establishes on the basis of an objective evaluation of the views of the commentators that the Upanisads do not support the main tenets of Advaita such as the concept of Nirvisesa Brahman, the identity of jivatman and Brahman, the phenomenal character of the jagat and the doctrine of maya. The author maintains with sufficient textual support that the nature of the philosophy advocated by the Upanisads is Theistic Monism (savisesadvaita). This book, which is the first of its kind, presents an authentic and comprehensive exposition of the philosophy of the Upanisads. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive critique of Advaita, which is very contemporary in its outlook, analysis, and technique. It supplements the classical Indian analysis with many special concepts and techniques extensively used in contemporary Western logic and analytic philosophy.

Contributed essays with focus on Advaita Vedantā.

On concept of liberation (Mokṣa) in Hindu philosophy.

In the early 1980s, U.S. universities began regulating sexual relationships between professors and students. Such regulations are routinely justified by a rationale drawn from sexual-harassment law in the employment context: the power differential between professor and student precludes the possibility of genuine consent on the student’s part. This rationale is problematic, as feminists in the 1980s first observed, for its protectionist and infantilizing attitude toward (generally) women students. But it is also problematic in that it fails to register what is (...) truly ethically troubling about consensual professor-student sex. A professor’s having sex with his student constitutes a pedagogical failure: that is, a failure to satisfy the duties that arise from the practice of teaching. What is more, much consensual professor-student sex constitutes a patriarchal failure: such relationships often feed on, and reinforce, women’s second-class standing in higher education. As such, these relationships can thwart the legal right of women students, under Title IX, to exist in the university on equal terms with their male counterparts. Whether or not we should ultimately favor such an interpretation of Title IX—whether or not, that is, it would render campuses ultimately more equal for women and other marginalized people—it is clear that university professors need to attend more carefully to the sexual ethics of their own practice. (shrink)

Donald Michie was many things; a computing pioneer in machine intelligence, a cryptographer who made key breakthroughs at Bletchley Park, and a geneticist. Tragically, two years ago he died in a car crash. Here, Ashwin Srinivasan presents an engaging collection of lively essays from Michie's writings, on thinking computers, mice, and much more.

On comparative philosophy; articles previously published in journals.