After spinal cord injury (SCI), motoneuron death occurs at and around the level of injury which induces changes in function and organization throughout the nervous system, including cortical changes. Muscle affected by SCI may consist of both innervated (accessible to voluntary drive) and denervated (inaccessible to voluntary drive) muscle fibers. Voluntary activation measured with transcranial magnetic stimulation (VATMS) can quantify voluntary cortical/subcortical drive to muscle but is limited by technical challenges including suboptimal stimulation of target muscle relative to its antagonist. (...) The motor evoked potential (MEP) in the biceps compared to the triceps (i.e., MEP ratio) may be a key parameter in the measurement of biceps VATMS after SCI. We used paired pulse TMS, which can inhibit or facilitate MEPs, to determine whether the MEP ratio affects VATMS in individuals with tetraplegia. Ten individuals with tetraplegia following cervical SCI and ten non-impaired individuals completed single pulse and paired pulse VATMS protocols. Paired pulse stimulation was delivered at 1.5, 10, and 30 ms inter-stimulus intervals (ISI). In both the SCI and non-impaired groups, the main effect of the stimulation pulse (paired pulse compared to single pulse) on VATMS was not significant in the linear mixed-effects models. In both groups for the stimulation parameters we tested, the MEP ratio was not modulated across all effort levels and did not affect VATMS. Linearity of the voluntary moment and superimposed twitch moment relation was lower in SCI participants compared to non-impaired. Poor linearity in the SCI group limits interpretation of VATMS. Future work is needed to address methodological issues that limit clinical application of VATMS. (shrink)

Minds Without Fear is an intellectual and cultural history of India during the period of British occupation. It demonstrates that this was a period of renaissance in India in which philosophy--both in the public sphere and in the Indian universities--played a central role in the emergence of a distinctively Indian modernity. The book is also a history of Indian philosophy. It demonstrates how the development of a secular philosophical voice facilitated the construction of modern Indian society and the consolidation of (...) the nationalist movement. (shrink)

Contemporary political philosophers often take for granted that for political purposes all humans are to be considered of equal worth. The difficulty, as Bernard Williams observed, is to find an interpretation of this claim that does not collapse into absurdity or triviality. I show that the principal attempts to solve this problem all beg the question against an Aristotelian proponent of natural hierarchy. I then explore existing proposals for dissolving the problem of basic equality, whether by denying the need for (...) justification altogether or by reframing justification in either ostensive or coherentist fashion, showing that each fails to account for our sense that basic equality is objectively true. In response, I outline a Hegelian approach that treats the commitment to basic equality as a social fact that constrains philosophical reasoning in contemporary liberal democracies. By itself that might suggest complacent conservatism or cultural relativism, but I argue that practices and institutions that reflect and foster a commitment to basic equality have a distinct value in permitting reciprocal recognition and thereby enabling us to make a distinct class of normative claims on one another. This Hegelian resolution of the problem is dialectically superior to its rivals and therefore warrants further development. (shrink)

In this paper we present the results of two experiments. The first is on the categorization of texture words in the English language. The goal was to determine whether there is a common basis for subjects' groupings of words related to visual texture, and if so, to identify the underlying dimensions used to categorize those words.Eleven major clusters were identified through hierarchical cluster analysis, ranging from “random” to “repetitive”. These clusters remained intact in a multidimensional scaling solution. The stress for (...) a three‐dimensional solution obtained through multidimensional scaling was 0.18, meaning that 82% of the variance in the data is explained through the use of three dimensions. It appears that the major dimensions of texture descriptors are repetitive versus nonrepetitive; linearly oriented versus circularly oriented; and simple versus complex.In the second experiment we measured the strength of association between texture words and texture images. The goal was to determine whether there is any systematic correspondence between the domains of texture words and texture images. Pearson's coefficient of contingency, a measure of the strength of association, was found to be 0.63 for words corresponding to given images and 0.56 for images corresponding to given words. Thus the texture categories in the verbal space and those in the visual space are strongly tied.In sum, our two experiments show (a) that despite the tremendous variety in the words we have to describe textures, there is an underlying structure to the lexical space which can be derived from the experimental data; and (b) that the association between a category of words and a category of images was strongest when both categories represent the same underlying property. This suggests that subjects' organizations of texture terms are systematically tied to their organization of texture images. (shrink)

Exploratory analyses are an important first step in psychological research, particularly in problem-based research where various variables are often included from multiple theoretical perspectives not studied together in combination before. Notably, exploratory analyses aim to give first insights into how items and variables included in a study relate to each other. Typically, exploratory analyses involve computing bivariate correlations between items and variables and presenting them in a table. While this is suitable for relatively small data sets, such tables can easily (...) become overwhelming when datasets contain a broad set of variables from multiple theories. We propose the Gaussian graphical model as a novel exploratory analyses tool and present a systematic roadmap to apply this model to explore relationships between items and variables in environmental psychology research. We demonstrate the use and value of the Gaussian graphical model to study relationships between a broad set of items and variables that are expected to explain the effectiveness of community energy initiatives in promoting sustainable energy behaviors. (shrink)

The essays, written by both chemists and philosophers, adopt distinctive philosophical perspectives on chemistry and collectively offer both a conceptualization ...

This book publishes, for the first time in decades, and in many cases, for the first time in a readily accessible edition, English language philosophical literature written in India during the period of British rule.

What is the best possible society? How would its rulers govern and its citizens behave? Such questions are sometimes dismissed as distractions from genuine political problems, but in an era when political idealism seems a relic of the past, says Jonny Thakkar, they are more urgent than ever. A daring experiment in using ancient philosophy to breathe life into our political present, Plato as Critical Theorist takes seriously one of Plato’s central claims: that philosophers should rule. What many accounts (...) miss is the intimate connection between Plato’s politics and his metaphysics, Thakkar argues. Philosophy is the activity of articulating how parts and wholes best fit together, while ruling is the activity that shapes the parts of society into a coherent whole conducive to the good life. Plato’s ideal society is thus one in which ideal theory itself plays a leading role. -/- Today’s liberal democracies require not philosopher-kings legislating from above but philosopher-citizens willing to work toward a vision of the best society in their daily lives. Against the claim that such idealism is inherently illiberal, Thakkar shows that it is fully compatible with the liberal theories of both Popper and Rawls while nevertheless pushing beyond them in providing a new vantage point for the Marxian critique of capitalism. (shrink)

The period of British colonial rule in India is typically regarded as philosophically sterile. Indian philosophy written in English during the British colonial period is often ignored in histories of Indian philosophy, or, when considered explicitly, dismissed either as uncreative or as inauthentic. The late Daya Krishna thought hard about this at the end of his life, and we have been thinking about this in conversation with him. We show that this dismissal is unjustified and that this is a fertile (...) period for Indian philosophy in which traditional Indian philosophical ideas were brought into dialogue with the West and advanced with great acumen. In this paper, we present one case study to illustrate this point. (shrink)

India has been independent for 70 years now, and it is a good time to reflect on the political philosophy that underwrote the movement that gained that independence. When we do so, we discover the origins of a political vocabulary that is still in use today, although sadly not used with the same rigor and precision with which it was used then. We also find that those who recur to Indian political thought from the pre-independence period tend to return to (...) a single strand of that thought—the theorization of ahimsa by Mohandas K. Gandhi, as for instance in the recent essay on Indian political thought in The New York Times by Gopalkrishna Gandhi (Gandhi won’t leave India 2017). In this discussion, we hope to draw attention to some of the less well-known resources offered by pre-independence Indian philosophy and in particular the political thought of the Arya samaji Congressman, philosopher and political activist, Lajpat Rai. His political philosophy is important for understanding the theorization of and debates within the Indian independence movement; we think that it also suggests ways to think about contemporary political and revolutionary movements and merits consideration in current debates in political philosophy. (shrink)

We argue that autism and psychosis spectrum disorders cannot be conceptualized as polar extremes of mentalizing ability. We raise two main objections: (1) the autistic-psychotic continuum, as conceptualized by the authors, excludes defining features of schizophrenia spectrum: negative symptoms, which correlate more strongly with mentalizing impairments; and (2) little evidence exists for a relationship between mentalizing ability and positive symptoms.

John Wyclif’s logical works have lain under a kind of fog since they were first published in the 1890s. My first aim is to clear up some long-standing confusions by dispelling this fog once and for all. A partial identification of Wyclif’s source material then allows me to make a more dramatic claim about persistent misunderstandings of what is thought to be his earliest work.

Viewer satisfaction measures how well a film's technical and artistic elements match or surpass the expectations and tastes provided by the viewer. Film quality refers to a film's technical and creative components. Out of 75 surveys that were provided, 50 valid results were utilized to emphasize the aspects affecting viewer satisfaction in Impact of Film Quality and View Environment. To enhance data validity and reliability, we employed the Statistical Package (SPSS) software to carry out the following tests. The correlation technique (...) was used to measure the extent of the connection between several factors like film quality, viewing environment, and the level of viewership satisfaction and the results yielded positive results. Proper regression analysis was also conducted to investigate the correctness of Resolution quality, Sound design, Cinematography, Seating comfortness, Ambient Lighting, and Viewing distance. The findings indicated how the watching setting and the caliber of the film affected the viewers' overall happiness levels. The findings also affirmed the robustness of the model which indicated that film quality impacted the respondents more than the viewing environment. These factors are highlighted in this study as key influences on viewer experiences and provide valuable information regarding possible improvements in the processes of film creation and marketing to increase audience engagement. The prevention statistically justified the quality of the film and the viewer's satisfaction with having a successful film. (shrink)

Abstract:Subject As Freedom (1930) is correctly regarded as Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya's magnum opus. But this text relies on a set of ideas and develops from a set of concerns that KCB develops more explicitly in essays written both before and after that text, which might be regarded as its intellectual bookends. These ideas are important and fascinating in their own right. They also illuminate KCB's engagement with Kant and with the Vedānta tradition as well as his understanding of freedom itself, including (...) its soteriological dimension. These two essays are "Sankara's Doctrine of Māyā" (1930) and "The Advaita and Its Spiritual Significance" (1936). We explore KCB's conception of philosophy and its relation to spiritual practice through a close reading of these two essays. (shrink)

Daya Krishna was easily the most creative and original Indian philosopher of the second half of the 20th century. His thought and philosophical energy dominated academic Indian philosophy and determined the nature of the engagement of Indian philosophy with Western philosophy during that period. He passed away recently, leaving behind an enormous corpus of published work on a wide range of philosophical topics, as well as a great deal of incomplete, nearly-complete and complete-but-as-yet-unpublished work. Daya Krishna's thought and publications address (...) a broad range of philosophical issues, including issues of global philosophical importance that transcend considerations of particular traditions; issues particular to Indian philosophy; and issues at the intersection of Indian and Western philosophy, especially questions about the philosophy of language and ontology that emerge in the context of his Samvada project that brought together Western philosophers and Nyaya pandits to discuss questions in the philosophy of language and metaphysics. The volume editors have organized the volume as a set of ten couplets and triplets. Each draws together papers from different periods in Daya Krishna's life: some take different approaches to the same problem or text; in some cases, the second paper references and takes issue with arguments developed in the first; in still others, Daya Krishna addresses very different topics, but using the same distinctive philosophical methodology. Each set is introduced by one of the editors. These couplets are framed by two of Daya Krishna's finest metaphilosophical essays, one that introduces his approach, and one that draws some of his grand morals about the discipline. Daya Krishna's daughter, Professor Shail Mayaram of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies contributes a preface, and Professor Arindam Chakrabarti, a longtime colleague of Daya Krisha and a collaborator on some of his most important philosophical ventures has written the introduction. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has enkindled many mental health problems across the globe. Prominent among them is the prevalence of post-traumatic stress with hosts of its precipitating factors being present in the surrounding. With India witnessing severe impact of the second wave of COVID-19, marked by a large number of hospitalizations, deaths, unemployment, imposition of lockdowns, etc., its repercussions on children and adolescents demand particular attention. This study aims to examine the direct and the indirect exposure of COVID-19-related experiences (...) on children and adolescents and its subsequent relationship with PTS and post-traumatic growth. The direct exposure was operationalized in terms of death or hospitalization in the family, while the indirect exposure was gauged in terms of exposure to media reports of the COVID situation. Data from 412 children and adolescents aged 9–20 years, collected online, revealed 68.9% of them with PTS. Interestingly, 39.8% of those reporting PTS were also experiencing PTG. Arousal appeared to be the most frequently reported characteristics of trauma. The multivariate analysis of variance endorses significant difference between those with direct and indirect exposures to hospitalization. Those with direct exposure to hospitalization reported higher PTS. The indirect exposure of COVID-19-related news through electronic media was also significantly associated with higher PTS. Exposure through print media did not lead to significant difference in PTS, but those reading only magazines reported significantly higher PTG than not reading magazines. The findings are analyzed in the light of unfolding of events during the second wave of COVID-19 in India. (shrink)

Despite the currently perceived urgent need among contemporary philosophers of chemistry for adjudicating between two rival metaphysical conceptual frameworks—is chemistry primarily a science of substances or processes?—this essay argues that neither provides us with what we need in our attempts to explain and comprehend chemical operations and phenomena. First, I show the concept of a chemical property can survive the abandoning of the metaphysical framework of substance. While this abandonment means that we will need to give up essential properties, contingent (...) properties can give us all the stability we need to account for chemical continuity as well as change. I then go on to show that this attention to clusters of contingent properties does not force us into the arms of an alternative process metaphysical framework either. Finally, I sketch a view I call particularism with respect to chemical properties on analogy with moral particularism. I conclude by sketching some of the implications for the field of philosophy of chemistry of my proposal that we abandon our interest in the metaphysical question of what chemistry is primarily about in favor of a broadly scientific particularism with respect to kinds and properties. (shrink)

In this essay I first articulate what I take to be an influential and for the most part persuasive model in the western psychoanalytic tradition that is a response to tragic loss, namely, the one that we find in Freud’s little essay entitled ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ (1917). I then use a well-known Buddhist folk tale about the plight of a young woman named Kisagotami to underscore central elements from Buddhist psychology on the subject of suffering that is a consequence of (...) the loss of a young mother’s only child. Fortified by both traditions, I gather together the ingredients for a cross-cultural mental model that serves to explain and to justify as healthy a specific kind of response to a specific form of suffering, namely, the loss of ones’ loved one. I arrive at this model by asking a number of specific questions of both traditions. For instance, what constitutes a non-pathological response to this kind of suffering? What state of mind represents the cessation of such suffering? Is preoccupation with the dead beloved a way of escaping the fact that the person is dead? Is this a form of ignorance that needs to be removed? Is it a form of moral deficiency? Might certain forms and contexts of ignorance, in effect, put one on a path to enlightenment? (shrink)

My dissertation project addresses the problem of the legitimacy of "transcendental" arguments. This is an old, familiar problem that goes all the way back to Kant and The Critique of Pure Reason. There, for the first time, we have an explicit attempt to define, characterize and develop a distinct kind of argument. This kind of argument was intended to provide a model which could be used to establish the truth of a quite distinctive sort of proposition, the synthetic apriori. ;The (...) task of this dissertation is to articulate a central paradigm for transcendental arguments, that of being a conceivability argument of a rather special kind; and to reconstruct a Davidsonian argument in the philosophy of language that has all the features that are essential to the paradigm and to show that this argument avoids the familiar sorts of problem that have been claimed to attach to transcendental arguments in general. The project, if successful, serves to illuminate the kinds of features that we ought to care about in constructing and evaluating transcendental arguments. This dissertation suggests that we need to think of the nature of the transcendental in a way that is different from how it is normally understood, but which is such that it retains what is and has always been the truly deep and substantive reasons for interest in arguments of this kind. (shrink)

Two recent publications have greatly increased the amount of Wyclif available in translation: the Trialogus, translated by Stephen Lahey, and an anthology translated by Stephen Penn. This review article documents the failings that make these translations worse than useless. A post mortem leads me to claim that the publication of these volumes, the first of which has already been warmly received, is a sign of a gathering crisis in medieval studies, and one that we should take steps to avert.

Organizations of all types are vulnerable to frauds. Banks contribute to a significant extent in a country’s economic development by generating a large part of revenue in the service sector. Deterrence of fraud is impossible without understanding it. The present study attempts to extract themes by highlighting the major areas of the bank fraud literature within a specific time frame of 2000–2019 and finding the research gaps citing the future scope for research. Post the review of existing literature, using thematic (...) analysis, two major themes were observed by the author, namely, “regulatory and compliance”–based studies and studies related to the “socio psychological” aspect of the literature. An examination of themes indicated that the popularity of the research areas shifted from accounting frauds or balance sheet frauds in early 2000s to areas such as cyber frauds and identity theft at the later decade. The present study paves way forward for future research on the bank customer’s vigilance, experiences and perspectives on frauds. Other significant areas of research include coping mechanisms with the various challenges faced by banks in marketing themselves after any major fraud occurrence. (shrink)

One of the founding myths of analytic philosophy is that the predicate logic that was developed in the late 19th century was far more powerful than its predecessors. This ambitious book argues on the contrary that medieval philosophers developed "a system of logic that is similar to the predicate calculus in richness and power" – or that, as Parsons put it in his presidential address to the APA, "the core of medieval logic is as accurate and as expressive as the (...) core of contemporary logic.". (shrink)

Francis of Marchia (c. 1290-1344) is said to have challenged Aristotelian orthodoxy by uniting the celestial and terrestrial realms in a way that has important implications for the practice of natural philosophy. But this overlooks Marchia's vital distinction between bare potentiality, which is actualizable only by God, and natural potency, which is the concern of the natural philosopher. If due attention is paid to this distinction, Marchia's position no longer seems to be revolutionary.

Debates over the privatization of formerly public industries and services are common in contemporary politics. The overall goal of this paper is to suggest a normative framework within which deliberations over public ownership might take place. I draw this framework from Plato's Republic, which I claim justifies public ownership as a means for ensuring that citizens labour as craftsmen rather than moneymakers; according to Plato's social ontology, only craftsmen can constitute a genuine society and hence enjoy access to the full (...) array of goods for the sake of which society comes into existence. This justificatory structure implies that public ownership is only a means for ensuring the appropriate teleology of labour; if there turn out to be better means, so be it. But what does turn out to be indispensable on this view, as G. A. Cohen understood, is an ethos of justice, especially among those in charge of regulating social institutions. (shrink)