The term sustainability has become one of the most significant in the current era. It seems to be ubiquitous amongst academics, politicians, business leaders, media personnel and even the general public. It is no exaggeration to state that it is considered all over the world to be the most pressing issue to be addressed for the long-term future of the planet and its inhabitants. The topic is of course complex, and the issue of sustainability is under much debate as to (...) what it actually is and how it can be achieved, but it is completely certain that the resources of the planet are fixed in quantity and, once used, cannot be reused except through being reused in one form or another. At present, much of the discourse of sustainability has focused upon the environment and in particular upon climate change and the effects that this is having. Thus, the discourse has tended to be about mitigation. Sustainability of course requires all three pillars of the triple bottom line—economic, environmental and social—to be addressed. Indeed, it might be considered that the effects upon the social, and how we choose to live our lives, might well be the most profound effect of achieving sustainability. This book therefore focuses upon some of the many aspects of the social and how we can adapt our lives to accommodate the requirements of sustainability. it therefore takes a very different approach to addressing the issues of sustainability, while of course not ignoring the other pillars. This book therefore sets out to examine various aspects of the changes to personal, corporate and institutional behaviour which may have to come about in our search for sustainability. It is tended to address some of the issues and how they are being dealt with in various parts of the world. As always, our concept is to share best practice and thereby enrich both the discourse and our progress towards sustainability. Thus, we focus upon the current situation while also considering the extent to which the focus is changing so much that we need to think about new approaches to our understanding of behaviour and differing effects in practice. The international origins of the contributors to this book make this an original contribution taking some of the best ideas from around the world. This book therefore addresses these issues from a perspective not generally addressed by researchers, or even by politicians and the press. It therefore provides fresh perspectives upon the important issue of our common future. As always, this approach is based on the tradition of the Social Responsibility Research Network srrnet.org (a worldwide body of scholars with membership of several thousand), which in its 20-year history has sought to broaden the discourse and to treat all research as inter-related and relevant to business. This tradition has always been to explore the subject widely and to seek relevant solutions, while also sharing best practice. This book is based primarily upon some of the contributions from the network at our recent conference and shows both commonality and diversity in approaches and effects. (shrink)

The need to nurture dynamic leadership in all possible ways is felt all the more today in the world. Leadership must be aligned with the world where it can be stated that the world is too complex and is rapidly changing and hence, one person alone cannot provide all the answers. Dynamism in thought, word and action can certainly benefit the leader, the organization as well as the country in diverse ways. Leader can no longer be a person - a (...) person who is in charge of a group and instead, the thought is that leadership can come from anyone. This means we need many leaders who are able to offer dynamic leadership that is needed in the modern age. Fallacious thinking most often leads to rigidity, self-centeredness, vindictiveness, biases, indifference in context to leadership are explicit today. For example, corruption, lack of commitment, opportunistic leadership etc. The possibility of nurturing dynamic leadership thought is an important proposition that this paper raises. This implies orienting leaders to eliminate fallacies and sharpen logical thinking in a gradual way. A good leader should exude integrity, self-awareness, courage, respect, empathy, and gratitude besides being an agile, effective delegator, and show the direction of growth. It is a belief that these key leadership qualities can be learned and improved through professional coaching, mentoring and counselling. Research indicates that value-based leadership generally leads to better decision-making, increased support for decisions and leader transparency, better follower morale, and opportunities to build trustworthy relationships. There is also a discussion that the leaders who appreciate the influence of servant leadership and emotional intelligence in their relationships have the potential to develop high-quality interpersonal relationships with all stakeholders. Hence, in view of leadership styles this paper is also an exploration of leadership styles that can be mentored through philosophical counselling. (shrink)

Critique of Justice is a collection of reflective essays on ditferent dimensions of justice written by eminent scholars of Philosophy and allied disciplines who are astively engaged in the academic pursuit and promoting the cause of philosophy The book is conceived from the standpoint of multi-perspectival approach to the multifarious concept of justice which is regarded as the highest value in any civilized society On the one hand from traditional metaphysical point of view justice consists of the eternal and immutable (...) principles hat are transcendent, objective and absolute, where as from modern positivistic and empirical approachjustice is ahuman construct relative to time and space. Justice is, therefore, regarded as complex and dynamic concept which is multi-dimensional. It synthesizes other values like rights, liberty equality and property. In this well researched book there are 40 scholarly articles covering a wide range from Plato's concept of justice to Nozick's concept of justice in the Western Philosophy and from Vedic concept of justice to Amartya Sen's view ofjustice in Indian perspective. (shrink)

A Theory of Magnitude suggests that space, time, and quantities are processed through a generalized magnitude system. ATOM posits that task-irrelevant magnitudes interfere with the processing of task-relevant magnitudes as all the magnitudes are processed by a common system. Many behavioral and neuroimaging studies have found support in favor of a common magnitude processing system. However, it is largely unknown whether such cross-domain monotonic mapping arises from a change in the accuracy of the magnitude judgments or results from changes in (...) precision of the processing of magnitude. Therefore, in the present study, we examined whether large numerical magnitude affects temporal accuracy or temporal precision, or both. In other words, whether numerical magnitudes change our temporal experience or simply bias duration judgments. The temporal discrimination paradigm was used to present numerical magnitudes across varied durations. We estimated temporal accuracy and precision for each numerical magnitude. The results revealed that temporal accuracy for large numerical magnitude was significantly lower than that of small and identical magnitudes. This implies that the temporal duration was overestimated for large numerical magnitude compared to small and identical numerical magnitude, in line with ATOM’s prediction. However, no influence of numerical magnitude was observed on temporal precision. The findings of the present study suggest that task-irrelevant numerical magnitude selectively affects the accuracy of processing of duration but not duration discrimination itself. Further, we argue that numerical magnitude may not directly affect temporal processing but could influence via attentional mechanisms. (shrink)

This mini-review provides a detailed outline of studies that have used multimodal approaches in non-invasive brain stimulation to investigate the pathophysiology of the three common movement disorders, namely, essential tremor, Parkinson’s disease, and dystonia. Using specific search terms and filters in the PubMed®database, we finally shortlisted 27 studies in total that were relevant to this review. While two-thirds (Brittain et al., 2013) of these studies were performed on Parkinson’s disease patients, we could find only three studies that were conducted in (...) patients with essential tremor. We clearly show that although multimodal non-invasive brain stimulation holds immense potential in unraveling the physiological mechanisms that are disrupted in movement disorders, the technical challenges and pitfalls of combining these methods may hinder their widespread application by movement disorder specialists. A multidisciplinary team with clinical and technical expertise may be crucial in reaping the fullest benefits from such novel multimodal approaches. (shrink)

Proponents of Veritism believe that truth is the sole non-instrumental epistemic good. This view is often taken to entail that all truths should be of equal epistemic value. Hence, it is put under stress by the presence of trivial truths: truths to which we attach relatively little or no epistemic value. Pritchard, in the defense of Veritism, has tried to argue that the best way to understand the implications of Veritism is to think in terms of how an intellectually virtuous (...) inquirer would pursue truth. Furthermore, he thinks that such an inquirer would prefer weighty truths and set aside trivial ones. As such, he thinks that our epistemic disregard for trivial truths is just to be expected given Veritism. We argue that Pritchard’s defense of Veritism fails, and the problem of trivial truths remains a significant challenge for Veritism. (shrink)

This article is published in the Indian Philosophical Quarterly (student supplement).