Can we identify individuals with a larger basic capacity than Cowan's proposed limit? Thompson et al. (1993) claimed that Rajan Mahadevan had a basic memory span of 13–15 items. Some of their supporting evidence is reconsidered and additional data are presented from study of another memory expert. More detailed analysis of performance in such cases may yield different conclusions.

Bhattacharyya, K. The Advaita concept of subjectivity.--Deutsch, E. Reflections on some aspects of the theory of rasa.--Nakamura, H. The dawn of modern thought in the East.--Organ, T. Causality, Indian and Greek.--Chatterjee, M. On types of classification.--Lacombe, O. Transcendental imagination.--Bahm, A. J. Standards for comparative philosophy.--Herring, H. Appearance, its significance and meaning in the history of philosophy.--Chang Chung-yuan. Pre-rational harmony in Heidegger's essential thinking and Chʼan thought.--Staal, J. F. Making sense of the Buddhist tetralemma.--Enomiya-Lassalle, H. M. The mysticism of Carl Albrecht (...) and Zen.--Parrinder, G. The nature of mysticism.--Cairns, G. E. Axiological contributions of East and West to the spiritual development of mankind.--Mayeda, S. Śaṇkara's view of ethics.--Mercier, A. On peace.--Barlingay, S. S. A discussion of some aspects of Gaudapāda's philosophy. (shrink)

The identity of an academic discipline is essentially tied to production and reproduction of its disciplinary knowledge. This, in turn, determines the criteria of academic achievement for academicians belonging to a particular discipline. The ability of an academician to contribute to the disciplinary knowledge through publication of high-impact papers is considered to be of highest value in academic disciplines. This constitutes an essentialist paradigm of understanding academic disciplines. Such a paradigm, however, undervalues other equally important forms of academic labour, like (...) academic service, which support, develop and repair the academic world through practice of care. In his paper, the essentialist paradigm is critically appraised through Paperwinner’s Model, an adaptation of Breadwinner’s Model. Through the lens of ethics of care, specifically Joan Tronto’s responsibility-based ethics, the paper offers an alternate paradigm, the deflationary perspective on academia, to acknowledge and evaluate the significance of caring practices. The paper concludes with a formative suggestion to institutionally recognize and reward care through service-intensive positions. (shrink)

Consciousness has been the bone of contention for philosophers throughout centuries. Indian philosophy largely adopted lived experience as the starting point for its explorations of consciousness. For this reason, from the very beginning, experience was an integral way of grasping consciousness, whose validity as a tool was considered self-evident. Thus, in Indian philosophy, the question was not to move from the brain to mind but to understand experience of an individual and how such an experience is determined through mental structures (...) (and secondarily, the preoccupation with the brain and its relation to the mind). In contrast, cognitive science (the study of mind and cognition through 1 interdisciplinary methods, with emphasis on computational methods) found its debates soaked in discussion which primarily involved the brain and mind. Experience was not considered a primary source of information and its validity had to be established to consider it a source of information of mind. With the rise of physicalism and realization that mental states are correlative to brain states, the body was virtually neglected from involvement in understanding the mind and the attempts to reduce mind to the brain were rampant. The inability to explain subjective experience of an individual through neuroscientific findings alone has urged philosophers to explore other ways of understanding the ontology of mind. Over the last few years, embodied cognition and enactive approach have brought back the body as a central participant in this debate, providing fertile grounds to explain the relation of brain, body and mind. This paper proposes that we understand the brain as a complex system from which the mind emerges. This emergence is marked by the development of novel property of self-consciousness in human beings. The mind is a process which is embedded throughout the body and thus, the body acts as an actualizing medium for the individual. Thus, the brain is a necessary condition for the mind to be while the mind is embedded throughout the body. The brain and mind are in reciprocal causal relationship with one another, as is the body and environment with one another. In this paper, embodied cognition is understood through principles of Merleau Ponty's idea of embodiment, than through Andy Clark and Francis Varela's alone. (shrink)

This is a (very) introductory paper to a forthcoming existentalist account of moral absolutism and violence. It was written for and presented at ICPR Seminar 2018. In feminist ethics, the freedom to choose one's way of living is primary to the struggle against patriarchy. Such a choice to live a certain way is a manifestation of one's individuality. This assertion of individuality is accompanied by responsibility towards consequences of the way of living. To explore the relation between individuality and responsibility, (...) I develop and build the hypothetical situation of a mother and daughter with different ways of living. The notion of a good life for each of them is mentioned and we ask: To what extent is the daughter responsible for the anguish that the mother undergoes in her assertion of individuality (through her choice of way of living)? My primary aim in this paper is to question the nature of individuality and to probe the claim that individuality is a source of violence. This will involve discussing the scope of responsibility for one's choices and the difficulty in forming a criterion to delineate such a scope. (shrink)

The Puranas are texts sacred to Hinduism. We must have heard of the two great epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The Mahabharata states that there are eighteen Puranas and also names three of them the Markandeya Purana the Vayu Purana and the Matsya Purana. Although the Ramayana does not mention any puranas by name the word Puranas is mentioned several times. This means that the composers of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata were familiar with the Puranas.

"Although the feminist debate on the ethics of care has demonstrated that philosophical concepts are gender-laden, the relation of care to justice and autonomy is not self- explanatory. Moreover, given its Western context, the normative relevance of the care debate to non-Western feminisms remains problematic. This book addresses this debate and investigates the extent to which notions of justice and autonomy can be reformulated without Eurocentrism from the perspective of care. In this endeavour, this book maps the shifts in feminist (...) approaches to care from the colonial to the post-colonial periods, taking both inter- disciplinarity and inter- sectionality into account. The book also argues that the feminist debate on care has contributed towards making philosophy's boundaries with culture and social science more porous."--Rabat de la jaquette. (shrink)

Periurban bypasses are enclaves that appear to be left behind of conventional spatial and technological processes. With the focus on cities and their development, the hinterland serves as a resource that barely makes its appearance in mainstream policy debates. Hidden even further in the periurban are areas whose inhabitants are marginalised in many ways. Developing an ethical framework for assessing periurban bypasses is rendered difficult by the complexity of attribution of harm to particular agents. Nevertheless, by using multiple modes of (...) interpretation and assessment of periurban bypasses, it is possible to create ethical profiles that identify social agents and elite networks for generating these harms. (shrink)

The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Poststructuralism offers a wide-ranging dialogue between theory and German Idealism, joining up the various lines of influence connecting German Idealist and Romantic philosophies in all their variety to post-'68 European philosophies, from Derrida and Deleuze to Žižek and Malabou. Key features: Provides in-depth reflections on the various conversations between German Idealism and theory, including an expanded canon of Idealist philosophers and a wide range of contemporary anti-foundationalist thinkers. Includes marginalized voices and concepts that (...) reflect both contemporary concerns as well as the sheer abundance of readings of German Idealism undertaken by European theorists over the last fifty years. Expands the existing scholarship by focusing on new, future directions emerging out of the idealism-theory relationship. The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Poststructuralism is essential reading for researchers and students of all levels — from senior scholars to advanced undergraduates — working on the legacy of German Idealist philosophers within philosophy departments, as well as all those interested in theory from across the humanities. (shrink)

The core of the work is a lengthy hermeneutically-oriented discussion of political judgment, which projects the notion of political competence as a language mediated capacity of human subjects to recognize the common good by way of discourse. This discursive conception of the political which is mediated on the one hand by a relationship to the moral and on the other to the conception which can be contrasted with the modern paradigm of politics as the episteme of power relations. The earlier (...) chapters build up to this contrast of the classical and the contemporary paradigms and stake out a claim for the primacy of the political in the classical mould. The work is a return to the classical idea of the political by way of a long detour via the theory of judgment, the Kuhnian theory of paradigms, Ricoeur's theory of textual hermeneutics and rhetorical theory. Ranging from discussions of sociological and political theory to philosophy of language and philosophical logic, the work seeks to connect the Aristotelian-Kautilyan conception of the political to contemporary debates in the metatheory of the social sciences. (shrink)

All theories of world creation, whether scientific, philosophical, or religious, can readily acknowledge the fact that humans have primarily evolved to engage with nature, the individual self, fellow human beings, society, and other naturalistic aspect of existence. Nevertheless, several novel challenges ascend when the human mind engages with technology, media, machines, and related concepts such as—ChatGPT, artificial intelligence, and to name a few. For that reason, we need philosophy and critical assessment of the uncovered essence of advanced technologies, media and (...) machines and our way of life concerning them. In other words, protectively assessing their impact requires a thorough examination of ethical and existential concerns, including technology’s implications for freedom, AI’s evolving role, the essence of human being, and the unexamined transformative societal changes that follow. Building upon the premise that these phenomena share a common thread despite their apparent disparities, our interdisciplinary pursuit draws inspiration from philosophical luminaries such as Luciano Floridi, Karamjit S. Gill, David Kaplan, Aldous Huxley, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, and Gandhi. Through philosophical insights, we explore the essence of technology and its broad effects, with a focus on its impact on human freedom and essence in both public and private domains. (shrink)

This article examines the often overlooked yet crucial role of care work within the academic ecosystem. Challenging the dominant paradigm that prioritizes research output, the article argues for recognizing academic labour as a spectrum where teaching, research, and service hold equal value. Drawing on Rajan’s framework of ‘academic care work’, the article demonstrates the inseparable link between care and knowledge, highlighting how care work forms the foundation for knowledge production and reproduction. The analysis situates academic care workers within the (...) complex administrative landscape of higher education institutions, exploring the challenges posed by managerialism and external pressures. The article introduces the ‘Argument from Shared Paradigm’, positing that academics, through their shared experiences and values, are uniquely positioned to advocate for and safeguard care-centred practices in research and teaching. By recognizing care work’s essential contributions, this article calls for a re-evaluation of academic reward systems and a shift towards a more inclusive academic culture. (shrink)

This is a collection of three studies of both retrospective and prospective significance for the author s preoccupation with the philosophical problems arising out of the transcendentalist orientation. The aim of the present work is to focus on the notion of the paradoxical alliance of unity and difference of the transcendentalist ego and the human subject. To think this notion through in terms of its implications and consequences and to rethink the nature and method of philosophy, its relation to language (...) and to the sciences, is what the author means by the humanization of transcendental philosophy.The first study addresses the genesis of the problematic of humanization in Husserl s phenomenology of the life-world; the second seeks to understand the presuppositions and consequences of Heidegger s transformation of phenomenology into fundamental ontology; and the third takes up the themes explored by Husserl and Heidegger as they enter into Merleau-Ponty s thought. In the Epilogue, the author seeks to balance the logocentrism of phenomenology with the biocentrism of a philosophy of life.The late R. Sundara Rajan was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Poona, Pune, Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, and Senior Fellow at the Indian Council of Philosophical Research, New Delhi, India. (shrink)

Over the past decade, in contrast to the traditional analytic version of metaphysics, a brand of metaphysics that prioritizes collaboration and corroboration with sciences has emerged in the form of scientific metaphysics. While there has been a shift from the methodological dependence of analytic metaphysis on intuition, and conceptual analysis to the methodological preference for empirically-motivated metaphysical insights in scientific metaphysics, such a shift has not penetrated the foundational aims. Scientific metaphysics continues to probe the nature and structure of reality, (...) much like its analytic counterpart and in this process, develops ontologies. Broadly two kinds of ontologies are furnished - global metaphysical ontologies and local scientific ontologies. In this paper, I highlight the challenges with developing such ontologies in scientific metaphysics. With Ladyman-Ross’ Information Theoretic Structural Realism as a case in point, I contest that the former suffers from representational indeterminacy and redundancy. Further, I note the possibility that eventually, local scientific ontologies might be replaced by scientific theories and in such a scenario, the former are best conceived as interim metaphysical supports for the latter. (shrink)

Abstract:In contemporary debates, the materialist ethics of Cārvāka has primarily been discussed in relation to and on the backdrop of ethical schema suited for systems whose metaphysics permits the notions of God and soul. This essay elaborates on this insight and draws attention to the significance of the metaphysical backdrop of ethical theories. We also briefl y discuss two aspects of Cārvāka materialistic ethics, which attends to the metaphysics of Cārvāka justly, namely the crucial role of pain in their ethical (...) theory and the lack of inherent moral value to actions. (shrink)

The paper firstly uses the case study of the Bhopal gas disaster to understand why many scholars and activists seek alternatives to 'big' development. Secondly, it critically examines the claims that have been made in this regard in the literature in political ecology, science and technology studies and environmental governance, and in doing so, articulates a framework of questions for the next generation of research and advocacy.

Providing medical care and planning for a procedure such as amputation may have different cultural contexts, based on patients’ country, comfort, and contract with their physician. These contexts may create complexities for physicians as they interact with patients and caregiving relatives. Issues such as the personal choices of a caregiving relative may appear to unduly influence the decisions behind complex healthcare choices. We consider several possible scenarios in the background of the complex case presented in “Family Loyalty as a Cultural (...) Obstacle to Good Care: The Case of Mrs. Indira,” in this issue of JCE. (shrink)

This book seeks to provide an introductory outline of the history and theory of knowledge production, notwithstanding the vastness of the subject. It is a brief history of intellectual formation or history of ideas. One can see it as a textbook of historical epistemology, which in spatio-temporal terms historicises knowledge production and contextualises methodological development. It addresses the historical process of the social constitution of knowledge, that is, the social history of the making of knowledge.

Discipline based approach to knowledge and specialization goes back to the classical Graeco-Roman times. It was Isaac Newton’s Principia, which represented academic perfection of Renaissance inquiry, criticism, creativity and theorization. Principia set the epochal model of knowledge and led to the making of the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Reason. August Comte heralded an era of Positivism in academic research and prepared the ground for the making of disciplines. As new knowledge accrued over centuries, specialization got diversified at (...) the expense of holistic understanding. Academics of disciplinary specialization sought to resolve the problem through multidisciplinary research. Inherently discipline centric, it got further distanced from social reality. Interdisciplinary approach began as a movement through convergence research aiming to restore holistic comprehension and draw knowledge closer to social reality. It is production of knowledge beyond disciplines and across their interfaces enabling research output to be regenerative, non-conventional and resolution oriented. (shrink)

BackgroundConventionally, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) aims to focalize the current reaching the target region-of-interest (ROI). The focality can be quantified by the dose-target-determination-index (DTDI). Despite having a uniform tDCS setup, some individuals receive focal stimulation (high DTDI) while others show reduced focality (“non-focal”). The volume of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), gray matter (GM), and white matter (WM) underlying each ROI govern the tDCS current distribution inside the brain, thereby regulating focality.AimTo determine the regional volume parameters that differentiate the focal and (...) non-focal groups.MethodsT1-weighted images of the brain from 300 age-sex matched adults were divided into three equal groups- (a) Young (20 ≤ × < 40 years), (b) Middle (40 ≤ × < 60 years), and (c) Older (60 ≤ × < 80 years). For each group, inter and intra-hemispheric montages with electrodes at (1) F3 and right supraorbital region (F3-RSO), and (2) CP5 and Cz (CP5-Cz) were simulated, targeting the left- Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC) and -Inferior Parietal Lobule (IPL), respectively. Both montages were simulated for two current doses (1 and 2 mA). For each individual head simulated for a tDCS configuration (montage and dose), the current density at each region-of-interest (ROI) and their DTDI were calculated. The individuals were categorized into two groups- (1) Focal (DTDI ≥ 0.75), and (2) Non-focal (DTDI < 0.75). The regional volume of CSF, GM, and WM of all the ROIs was determined. For each tDCS configuration and ROI, three 3-way analysis of variance was performed considering- (i) GM, (ii) WM, and (iii) CSF as the dependent variable (DV). The age group, sex, and focality group were the between-subject factors. For a given ROI, if any of the 3 DV’s showed a significant main effect or interaction involving the focality group, then that ROI was classified as a “focal ROI.”ResultsRegional CSF was the principal determinant of focality. For interhemispheric F3-RSO montage, interaction effect (p < 0.05) of age and focality was observed at Left Caudate Nucleus, with the focal group exhibiting higher CSF volume. The CSF volume of focal ROI correlated positively (r ∼ 0.16, p < 0.05) with the current density at the target ROI (DLPFC). For intrahemispheric CP5-Cz montage, a significant (p < 0.05) main effect was observed at the left pre- and post-central gyrus, with the focal group showing lower CSF volume. The CSF volume correlated negatively (r ∼ –0.16, p < 0.05) with current density at left IPL. The results were consistent for both current doses.ConclusionThe CSF channels the flow of tDCS current between electrodes with focal ROIs acting like reservoirs of current. The position of focal ROI in the channel determines the stimulation intensity at the target ROI. For focal stimulation in interhemispheric F3-RSO, the proximity of focal ROI reserves the current density at the target ROI (DLPFC). In contrast, for intrahemispheric montage (CP5-Cz), the far-end location of focal ROI reduces the current density at the target (IPL). (shrink)

Die feministische Kritik an Rawls lässt sich gut erläutern, indem man die Debatte um Care-Arbeit fokussiert. Kittay etwa geht davon aus, dass die Vernachlässigung des Phänomens von Abhängigkeit ihren Ursprung in den gleichen Problemen hat, die auch von feministischen Theorien vorgebracht worden sind. Dieser Beitrag versucht dabei einen konstruktiven Umgang mit der feministischen Kritik aufzuzeigen.