Metacognition, the ability to monitor and evaluate our own cognitive processes, confers advantages to individuals and their own judgment. A more recent hypothesis, however, states that explicit metacognition may also enhance the collective judgment of groups, and may enhance human collaboration and coordination. Here, we investigate this social function hypothesis of metacognition with arguably one of the oldest collaboration problems humans face, common-pool resource use. Using an agent-based model that simulates repeated group interactions and the forming of collective judgments about (...) resource extraction, we show that (1) in “kind” environments (where confidence and judgment accuracy correlate positively), explicit metacognition may allow groups to reach more accurate judgments compared to groups exchanging object-level information only; while (2) in “wicked” environments (where confidence and judgment accuracy correlate negatively), explicit metacognition may protect groups from the large judgment errors yielded by groups using metacognitive information for individual-level learning only (implicit metacognition). With explicit metacognition, this research highlights a novel mechanism which, among others, provides a testable explanation of the often-observed finding that groups all over the world communicate to enhance common property use. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Allen Carlson moves away from a purely scientific–cognitive framework for environmental aesthetics towards a ‘combination position’ based on the ecoaesthetics theorised by Xiangzhan Cheng. Carlson argues that only an aesthetics informed by ecological knowledge can offer the correct foundations for the continued relevance of environmental aesthetics to environmental ethics. However, closer analysis of Cheng's theory of ecoaesthetics reveals a number of problems related to questions of anthropocentrism and in particular, the issue of an ethic based on (...) love. In this paper, I offer an alternative approach for the future of environmental aesthetics in the form of an intergenerational aesthetics based on Indigenous and Local Knowledge (ILK). (shrink)

Classical commentary on Yogasūtra of Patañjali, work on Yoga philosophy; includes complete text of Yogasūtra.

Vaishnava philosophical work, in verse; critically edited.

Selected Sanskrit works with Hindi interpretation on Jaina philosophy and doctrines.

The automated identification of national implementations of European directives by text similarity techniques has shown promising preliminary results. Previous works have proposed and utilized unsupervised lexical and semantic similarity techniques based on vector space models, latent semantic analysis and topic models. However, these techniques were evaluated on a small multilingual corpus of directives and NIMs. In this paper, we utilize word and paragraph embedding models learned by shallow neural networks from a multilingual legal corpus of European directives and national legislation (...) to develop unsupervised semantic similarity systems to identify transpositions. We evaluate these models and compare their results with the previous unsupervised methods on a multilingual test corpus of 43 Directives and their corresponding NIMs. We also develop supervised machine learning models to identify transpositions and compare their performance with different feature sets. (shrink)

Indian intellectuals influenced by postmoderism such as Ashis Nandy and Vandana Shiva, put local folk beliefs on a par with science. Hindu nationalists, especially members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, following the lead of the historical figure Swami Vivekananda and the contemporary Subhash Kak, have developed what they call “Vedic Science”, including Vedic astrology and Vedic creationism. Although India welcomes new technology, it has for the most part rejected the values of modern science, thus embracing a stance of what might (...) be called reactionary modernism. (shrink)

On the fundamentals of Nyaya and Vaisesika philosophy.

Manual of the Advaita school in Indic philosophy.

"Bioethics A Very Short Introduction" for UG level or beginners.

Commentary on Yuktyanuśāsana of Samantabhadrasvāmī, work on Jaina philosophy.

In recent years irregular immigration has attracted increasing scholarly attention. Current academic debate casts the irregular immigrant in the role of the new political subject who acts out a right to have rights and/or as the rightless victim who is subjected to violence and abuse. However, the conception of the irregular immigrant as harbinger of political change and/or victim reifies the persistent dichotomy between inclusion and exclusion. It ignores that irregular immigrants are not by definition excluded from a normal life (...) and that numerous immigrants live in the interstices between full legal inclusion and exclusion without democratic legal order being cast to ruin. The question that underlies this essay is: What concept of law can accommodate the unauthorized presence of immigrants (i) without reducing them to bare life, struggling to survive and/or assigning them a political agency and (ii) without taking recourse to the use of force and violence in a zero-tolerance policy? To answer this question, this article draws on what Agamben has coined the potentiality of the law and unpacks Judith Shklar’s idea of different degrees of legalism. (shrink)

On political philosophy of Hemacandra, 1088-1172, Jaina philosopher.

Critical edition, with autocommentary and Hindi translation of a verse work on Jaina logic.

“The day the Enlightenment went out”, is how Gary Wills described the re-election of President George W. Bush in an op-ed column in the New York Times (November 4, 2004). Reflecting upon the conservative religious vote that put Bush back in the White House, Wills wondered if there was any connection between the fact that many more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin’s theory of evolution and that 75 percent of Bush supporters actually believed—without an iota of (...) credible evidence— that Iraq was directly responsible for the terrorist attack on 9/11. Wills asks if a people that have lost respect for evidence and critical reasoning can still be called an enlightened nation. “Belief that does not require proof or evidence” is how the Webster New World Dictionary defines the word “faith”. It also defines “faith” as “faith in God”. The American elections, then, turned out to be a massive faith-based initiative in both these senses of the word. Belief and policies backed not by evidence, but by religious values wedded to an aggressive nationalism are driving American politics. In this America is not alone. India, the subject matter of much of what follows, has had its own brush with faith-driven politics in which an aggressive Hindu nationalism came to color public policies, including science education.1 The question is: how do secular democracies like the United States and India (the world’s first and the world’s largest democracies, respectively), manage to square off their official commitment to enlightened values of openness and religion–state separation with the realities of faith-based politics? How do matters of fact—that is, questions that in principle can be decided by empirical evidence—end up getting decided on the basis of religious faith. This alchemy of turning secular matters of fact into religiouscivilizational matters holds the key to understanding the democratic-populist route to religious fundamentalism.. (shrink)

Collection of discourses on spiritual life and philosophy in Hinduism.

We provide evidence on the effects of criminal/corrupt politicians on firm performance and investments in their constituencies. Using a regression discontinuity approach, we focus on close parliamentary elections in India to establish a causal link between election of criminal-politicians and firms’ stock-market performance and investment decisions. Election of criminal-politicians leads to lower election-period and project-announcement stock-market returns for private-sector firms with economic ties to the district. There is a significant decline in total investment and employment by private-sector firms in criminal-politician (...) districts. Interestingly, decline in private-sector investment is largely offset by a roughly equivalent increase in investment by state-owned firms. (shrink)

Buddhism has a rich tradition in Bangladesh, developed through the development of Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism in ancient Bengal. The followers of Buddhism in present-day Bangladesh mainly live in the Chittagong region. Their religious life is reflected in temples, monasteries, and social activities. The non-violence and humanism of the Buddha's teachings have had a profound impact on the culture here. However, as a religious minority in modern times, the Buddhist community faces various challenges. This chapter analyses the historical context, current (...) impact, and prospects of Buddhism in Bangladesh. (shrink)

SummaryThis paper explores the hypothesis that gender attitude scales are associated with contraceptive use. Four hundred male and female respondents were interviewed using a pre-tested, structured questionnaire. Analyses included comparisons of means and prevalence rates on gender equity indicators, other related factors and socio-demographic characteristics;t-tests to compare mean scores on each gender scale for wives and husbands to identify any significant differences; chi-squared tests to compare associations between individual attributes, attitudes and contraceptive use; and multivariate logistic regression to examine associations (...) between each gender scale and contraceptive use. The findings revealed that, on average, wives endorsed more inequitable gender attitudes compared with husbands on all gender attitude scales. For wives, more equitable gender attitudes were positively associated with contraceptive use. For husbands, the role of gender attitudes had no significant association with wives' reported contraceptive use. Family planning programmes that aim to challenge inegalitarian gender norms should not overlook women in their efforts since both men and women often accept and support inequality in a social system and, in some cases, it may be women's gender attitudes that most influence family planning decisions. (shrink)

Samkhya philosophy is one of the oldest philosophies in the Indian philosophical system. This philosophy is independent in origin and mainly known for its evolution theory. Samkhya philosophy has accepted the two ultimate and independent realities, Nature and pure Consciousness. This paper is an attempt to comprehend the notion of deep ecology from the Samkhya’s evolution theory perspective. In this paper, firstly, we have elucidated the Samkhya philosophy of suffering and the solution to the problem. In the second part of (...) the article, we have argued that how Samkhya's philosophical notion of Nature demonstrates our embeddedness in Nature. Therefore, the idea of deep ecology is always there in one or another form in Samkhya philosophy. It has also connections to the idea of sustainable development. (shrink)

Sāṁkhya philosophy is the oldest philosophical school. Sāṁkhya philosophy explains the universe accepting only two fundamental categories which are prakṛṭi and puruṣa- where prakṛṭi is unconsciously active and puruṣa is consciously inactive. Similarly, Sāṁkhya philosophy discusses the mind-body relation in terms of puruṣa and prakṛṭi. Sāṁkhya also talks about the subjective identity as well as objective world. Although Sāṁkhya discusses about manyness of selves (bahu-puruṣa), but there is an argument that Sāmkhya philosophy would not establish the existence of other minds. (...) So, the argument of Sāṁkhya for other minds seems to stop midway. In this paper, I purport to discuss Sāṁkhya perspective and existence of other minds presented in Sāṁkhya philosophy. The paper also critically examines the Sāṁkhyakārikā of Īswarakṛṣṇa to bring out the possibility of epistemological argument of the other minds. (shrink)

In the Sāṁkhya, Puruṣa (self) is free, inactive and it is the nature of consciousness (cetanā). It is beyond time and space, and it has both merit and demerit, attachment and detachment. It is real form which is not bounded. All actions, pleasure and suffering, change and feeling, etc. are the distortions of the body. Puruṣa (self) is beyond the bodily and mental suffering (dukhaḥ). Puruṣa (self) is neither the cause nor the effect. Puruṣa (self) is not material, and it (...) is also not known by direct perception. Ācharya Śaṅkara critiques the Sāṁkhya view and says, If Puruṣa (self) is inactive then how can it possibly influence the others? Śaṅkara also questions the relation of the Puruṣa (self) with the Prakṛṭi (non-self). This paper elaborates the nature and the existence of Puruṣa (self), purpose of the inactive Puruṣa (self), the subjectivity of Puruṣa (self) from the text “Sāṁkhyakārikā”. A critical analysis of Śaṅkara‟s critique of the “Sāṁkhyakārikā” is made and by providing an analytical assessment of the self (Puruṣa) and its relation with the non-self (Prakṛṭi) the paper attempts at arguing against Śaṅkara‟s logic. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the concept of intermediate existence in the early Buddhist theory of rebirth. The main sources investigated for this article are the Pāli canonical and commentarial literature. My main thesis is that early Buddhist discourses contain instances that suggest a spatial-temporal gap between death and rebirth known as ‘intermediate existence’, in contrast to the idea of Theravāda Buddhist theory that rebirth takes place immediately without a spatial-temporal gap. In order to prove this, I argue that the ‘one who (...) liberates in interval’ attains Nibbāna in the intermediate existence and the concept of gandhabbā in early Buddhist discourses refers to a being in intermediate existence, not to a dying consciousness, and there are indirect inferences to an spatiotemporal gap between death and rebirth in the early Buddhist discourses. (shrink)

The Right to Have Rights as the Right to Asylum This article argues that the right to have rights, as launched by Hannah Arendt, is relative to refugee displacement and hence translates as a right to asylum. It takes issue with the dominant view that the public/private divide is the locus classicus of the meaning of this primordial right. A different direction of thought is proposed, proceeding from Arendt’s recovery of the spatiality of law. The unencompassibility of place in matters (...) of rights, freedom and equality brings this right into view as a claim at the behest of those who have lost a legal place of their own. This also helps us to gain better understanding of Arendt’s rebuttal of the sharp-edged distinction between refugees and stateless persons and to discover the defiant potential of the right to have rights to illuminate the refugee’s claim to asylum as a claim to an own place where protection can be enjoyed again. (shrink)