Death in bliss & bliss in death. Samadhi death means that at the time of death the dying one remembers nothing but his Soul. His mind, his chit, his intellect, and his ego are completely still. This is external bliss. Even problems created by external forces on his body have no effect on him. Samadhi death means there is a constant awareness of, 'I am the pure Soul.' All my mahatmas, those who have received my Gnan, who have passed away, (...) did so with the awareness of being the pure Soul. - Dadashri. (shrink)

We examine the role of socio-demographic factors on consumers’ pro-environmental behavior (PEB)–a subset of ethical behavior and analyze its implications in an emerging market, with a sample study from India. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was performed as research method. Results show that males display higher PEB than their female counterparts. Married consumers score more on PEB than single. Mid-age consumers (36–50) also score high on PEB than young and old-age consumers. Furthermore, highly educated consumers are more pro-environmentalist than graduates (...) and post-graduates. The novelty of this study is that centers on the use of demographic variables interactively in order to form microsegments. For instance, married men score more on PEB scale than unmarried men and women and prefer green channels even more (i.e., public transportation). On the contrary, unmarried women display no hesitation in paying more for energy-efficient goods compared to married men and unmarried men. Marketers may aim in setting such PEBs as the moral standards among consumers being an easily identifiable segment as their prime target. (shrink)

The Lord of the Fourteen worlds is manifest here. Questioner: For whom is the title 'Dada Bhagwan' used? Dadashri: For 'Dada Bhagwan.' Not for me. I am a 'Gnani Purush A. M. Patel.' 'Dada Bhagwan' is the Lord of the fourteen worlds. He dwells within you also, but He has not awakened yet, he remains unmanifested. Here within me, He is fully awakened and manifest. He is capable of awakening the Lord within you.

In 2006, United Nations Human Rights Council was tasked to establish a new human rights monitoring mechanism: Universal Periodic Review process. The objective of this process is to promote and protect the universality of all human rights issues and concerns via a dialogical peer review process. The primary aim of this investigation is to ask the following question: has this claim of promoting and protecting the universality of the human rights been met, or challenged, during state reviews in the UPR (...) process? The issue of polygamy has been selected as the focus for this investigation to be used, primarily, as a tool to undertake an in-depth analysis of the discussions held during state reviews in the review process. In addition, this paper will employ scholarly debates between universalism and cultural relativism, as well as the sophisticated and nuanced approaches that fall in between the polarised opposites, to analyse the discussions held on human rights during state reviews. Ultimately, the findings and discussion of this investigation will provide a unique and valuable insight to the work and operation of the UPR process, so far. (shrink)

Those seeking to lead a spiritual life will naturally ask themselves how to become more spiritual, and just how to live spiritual values. Is positive thinking the foundation of spirituality and, if so, how to get rid of negative thoughts? Must one somehow transcend good and bad, right and wrong? Where does one’s spiritual development truly begin? By enlightened definition, the foundation of a spiritual life is a faultless worldview; and to achieve such flawless vision, a spiritual awakening or Self (...) realization is required. In the book “The Flawless Vision”, Gnani Purush (embodiment of Self knowledge) Dada Bhagwan states: “When a person does not have Self-realization (spiritual enlightenment), he always sees faults in others and can never see his own mistake.” Then, Dadashri explains how to attain the Self – describing that the knowledge of Self the beginning of true spirituality. An automatic outcome and one of the most prominent signs of spiritual awakening, is a flawless or faultless vision of others and the world. Among the many spiritual books available from spiritual teachers today, “The Flawless Vision” is a unique and invaluable resource. (shrink)

The natural replacement of damaged cells by stem cells occurs actively and often in adult tissues, especially rapidly dividing cells such as blood cells. An exciting case in Boston, however, posits a kind of natural stem cell therapy provided to a mother by her fetus—long after the fetus is born. Because there is a profound lack of medical intervention, this therapy seems natural enough and is unlikely to be morally suspect. Nevertheless, we feel morally uncertain when we consider giving this (...) type of therapy to patients who would not naturally receive it. Much has been written about the ethics of stem cell research and therapy; this paper will focus on how recent advances in biotechnology and biological understandings of development narrow the debate. Here, the author briefly reviews current stem cell research practices, revisits the natural stem cell therapy case for moral evaluation, and ultimately demonstrates the importance of permissible stem cell research and therapy, even absent an agreement about the definition of when embryonic life begins.Although one promising technology, blighted ovum utilisation, uses fertilised but developmentally bankrupt eggs, it is argued that utilisation of unfertilised eggs to derive totipotent stem cells obviates the moral debate over when life begins. There are two existing technologies that fulfil this criterion: somatic cell nuclear transfer and parthenogenic stem cell derivation. Although these technologies are far from therapeutic, concerns over the morality of embryonic stem cell derivation should not hinder their advancement. (shrink)

Stanford argues that cooperators achieve and maintain correlated interaction through the objectification of moral norms. We first challenge the moral/non-moral distinction that frames Stanford's discussion. We then argue that to the extent that norms are objectified (and we hold that they are at most objectified in a very thin sense), it is not for the sake of achieving correlated interaction.

Research in formal theoretical semantics has recently expanded its scope to include gestural communication, focusing in particular on gestures that contribute to the content of an accompanying utterance, e.g., size gestures (LARGE, WIDE), pointing gestures, and gestures that depict objects (TELESCOPE) or actions (SLAP). At the same time, fruitful inquiries at the intersection of primatology and linguistics have given rise to the hypothesis that human and non-human great apes share a common set of directive (=imperative) gestures. Directive gestures such as (...) STOP or COME-CLOSER, pose non-trivial issues for a semantic analysis: we inherit the challenges that pertain to the analysis of imperative utterances (Come closer!), while adding a further challenge that stems from the underspecified mapping between a directive body movement and its potential counterparts in human language. We begin by outlining the problem and surveying the nascent state-of-the-art with regards to a formal semantics of directive gestures. Particular attention is given to the multifunctionality of directive gestures, which typically have different effects in different contexts; for example, a non-human ape gesture may communicate "Stop that" in some contexts and "Move away" in others, with similar patterns found in humans. We show that this multifunctionality can be derived from a single, rich abstract lexical entry, "Not…!", a candidate for a universal building block of meaning, shared by human and non-human great apes. "Not…!", which incorporates negation/rejection, temporal reference and presuppositionality is more explanatory in comparison to a minimal alternative. This chapter lays out the hypothesis space, addressing the foundational question of how to explain attested gestural overlap between human and non-human great apes. We conclude the chapter by reviewing potential expansions of the analysis to the pragmatic gestures of humans, which are thus placed on the primate gestural meaning continuum and connected to the directive gestures we share with our non-human relatives in the great ape family. (shrink)

Female crested gibbons (genus Nomascus) perform conspicuous sequences of twitching movements involving the rump and extremities. However, these dances have attracted little scientific attention and their structure and meaning remain largely obscure. Here we analyse close-range video recordings of captive crested gibbons, extracting descriptions of dance in four species (N. annamensis, N. gabriellae, N. leucogenys and N. siki). In addition, we report results from a survey amongst relevant professionals clarifying behavioural contexts of dance in captive and wild crested gibbons. Our (...) results demonstrate that dances in Nomascus represent a common and intentional form of visual communication restricted to sexually mature females. Whilst primarily used as a proceptive signal to solicit copulation, dances occur in a wide range of contexts related to arousal and/or frustration in captivity. A linguistically informed view of this sequential behaviour demonstrates that movement within dances is organized in groups and follows an isochronous rhythm — patterns not described for visual displays in other non-human primates. We argue that applying the concept of dance to gibbons allows us to expand our understanding of communication in non-human primates and to develop hypotheses on the rules and regularities characterising it. We propose that crested gibbon dances likely evolved from less elaborate rhythmic proceptive signals, similar to those found in siamangs. Although dance displays in humans and crested gibbons share a number of key characteristics, they cannot be assumed to be homologous. Nevertheless, gibbon dances represent a striking model behaviour to investigate the use of complex gestural signals in hominoid primates. (shrink)

This book is the first to bring together an interdisciplinary collection of essays on surrogacy and egg donation from three socially, legally and culturally distinct countries - India, Israel and Germany. It presents contributions from experts in the field of social and cultural sciences, bioethics, law as well as psychology and provides critical-reflective comparative analysis of the socio-ethical factors shaping surrogacy and egg donation practices across these three countries. This book highlights the importance of a comparative perspective to ‘make sense’ (...) of controversies and transitions in this highly contested area of artificial reproductive technologies. It demonstrates how local developments cannot be isolated from global events and vice versa. Therefore, this volume can be used as a standard reference for anyone seeking to understand surrogacy and egg donation from a macro-perspective in the next decade. (shrink)

This article describes a representation-based framework of distributed cognition. This framework considers distributed cognition as a cognitive system whose structures and processes are distributed between internal and external representations, across a group of individuals, and across space and time. The major issue for distributed research, under this framework, are the distribution, transformation, and propagation of information across the components of the distributed cognitive system and how they affect the performance of the system as a whole. To demonstrate the value of (...) this representation-based approach, the framework was used to describe and explain an important, challenging, and controversial issue — the concept of affordance. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of mutual funds in corporate social responsibility. Using a fund-level, holdings-based CSR score, we find that CSR-friendly mutual funds improve firms’ CSR standings. This effect is more pronounced for firms with higher mutual fund ownership and stronger corporate governance. We further show that while CSR-friendly mutual funds have influence on almost all CSR categories, they focus on increasing CSR strengths rather than reducing CSR concerns. We also discover that CSR-friendly funds are more likely to vote (...) in favor of CSR proposals, and that firms owned by CSR-friendly funds are more likely to link their CEO compensation to CSR outcomes. These results suggest that actively managed mutual funds, which were previously thought to be indifferent to social and ethical issues, play a significant role in corporate social outcomes of the firms they invest in. (shrink)

We extend the literature by providing evidence that a cultural variable, intrinsic Islamic religiosity is important in understanding auditors’ judgement in the Islamic context of Pakistan. The intrinsic Islamic religiosity theoretical construct examined is Islamic Worldview which represents deeply held enduring and stable values which are likely to be dominant in influencing professionals’ judgements. Moreover, theoretical underpinning and empirical evidence in social psychology and organisational behaviour have established the critical role of intrinsic religiosity in influencing behaviour. Our first objective is (...) to examine whether IW impacts auditors’ judgements in the context of their acceptance of uncorroborated low-reliability client-provided evidence. Understanding the potential impact of cultural factors on auditors’ acceptance of client-provided information is an essential factor in improving audit quality. Our findings support the hypothesis that auditors with high IW scores are more likely to accept uncorroborated low-reliability client-provided evidence. Our second objective is to examine the relationship between IW and auditors’ preference for exercising more or less judgements. Examining this topic is important because auditing is a judgement-based process: auditors’ judgements determine audit quality and, by extension, the quality of associated financial reports. Our findings provide overall support for the hypothesis that auditors with high IW scores have a preference for exercising more judgement. Our findings have implications for global and national standard setters, regulators, practitioners, and researchers. The results are also relevant to global audit firms and their affiliates, particularly networks operating in Islamic countries, in ensuring global consistency of audits. (shrink)

There are a number of conflicting accounts of thought insertion, the delusion that the thoughts of another are inserted into one’s own mind. These accounts share the common assumption of realism: that the subject of thought insertion has a thought corresponding to the description of her thought insertion episode. I challenge the assumption by arguing for an anti-realist treatment of first-person reports of thought insertion. I then offer an alternative account, simulationism, according to which sufferers merely simulate having a thought (...) inserted into their heads. By rejecting realism, the paper undermines a widespread explanatory framework that unites otherwise competing cognitive models of thought insertion. (shrink)

The claim that perfect hallucination is introspectively indistinguishable from perception has been a centrepiece of philosophical theorizing about sense experience. The most common interpretation of the indistinguishability claim is modal: that it is impossible to distinguish perfect hallucination from perception through introspection alone. I run through various models of introspection and show that none of them can accommodate the modal interpretation. Rejecting the modal interpretation opens up two alternative interpretations of the indistinguishability claim. According to the generic interpretation, hallucination is (...) indistinguishable from perception despite the existence of possible exceptions, while according to the actuality interpretation, the indistinguishability of hallucination from perception consists in the actual failure to distinguish hallucination from perception. These alternative understandings of the indistinguishability claim have a number of significant implications for the problem of perception, including the rejection of perfect hallucination and illusion in favour of our ordinary, non-philosophical concepts of these states. (shrink)

Improvements in the health capital of citizens are central to the development of countries. By exploiting steep decreases in antiretroviral drug prices and the subsequent increases in antiretroviral therapy (ART) coverage, we test whether the resulting improvements in the health of the population are associated with the prevalence of entrepreneurial activity and whether entrepreneurial activity strengthens the relationship between ART coverage and a country’s development. Drawing on a sample of 87 low- and middle-income countries (2006–2019), we find that a 1% (...) increase in ART coverage is associated with a 1.5% increase in the number of newly registered limited liability firms; however, there is no significant relationship with (male or female) self-employment. Higher ART coverage is particularly associated with development—as proxied by gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and the Human Development Index—in countries with low levels of new business formation and high proportions of self-employment. (shrink)

The popularity of ‘food sovereignty’ to cover a range of positions, interventions, and struggles within the food system is testament, above all, to the term’s adaptability. Food sovereignty is centrally, though not exclusively, about groups of people making their own decisions about the food system—it is a way of talking about a theoretically-informed food systems practice. Since people are different, we should expect decisions about food sovereignty to be different in different contexts, albeit consonant with a core set of principles (...) (including women’s rights, a shared opposition to genetically modified crops, and a demand for agriculture to be removed from current international trade agreements). In this paper we look at the analytical points of friction in applying ideas of food sovereignty within the context of Indigenous struggles in North America. This, we argue, helps to clarify one of the central themes in food sovereignty: that it is a continuation of anti-colonial struggles, even in post-colonial contexts. Such an examination has dividends both for scholars of food sovereignty and for those of Indigenous politics: by helping to problematize notions of food sovereignty and postcoloniality, but also by posing pointed questions around gender for Indigenous struggles. (shrink)

As a neo-liberal economy, India has become one of the new health tourism destinations, with commercial gestational surrogacy as an expanding market. Yet the Indian Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill has been pending for five years, and the guidelines issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research are somewhat vague and contradictory, resulting in self-regulated practices of fertility clinics. This paper broadly looks at clinical ethics in reproduction in the practice of surrogacy and decision-making in various procedures. Through empirical research in (...) New Delhi, the capital of India, from December 2011 to November 2012, issues of decision-making on embryo transfer, fetal reduction, and mode of delivery were identified. Interviews were carried out with doctors in eighteen ART clinics, agents from four agencies, and fourteen surrogates. In aiming to fulfil the commissioning parents’ demands, doctors were willing to go to the greatest extent possible in their medical practice. Autonomy and decision-making regarding choice of the number of embryos to transfer and the mode of delivery lay neither with commissioning parents nor surrogate mothers but mostly with doctors. In order to ensure higher success rates, surrogates faced the risk of multiple pregnancy and fetal reduction with little information regarding the risks involved. In the globalized market of commercial surrogacy in India, and with clinics compromising on ethics, there is an urgent need for formulation of regulative law for the clinical practice and maintenance of principles of reproductive ethics in order to ensure that the interests of surrogate mothers are safeguarded. (shrink)

The last decades have seen major advances in the study of gestures both in humans and non-human primates. In this paper, we seriously examine the idea that there may be gestural form types that are shared across great ape species, including humans, which may underlie gestural universals, both in form and meaning. We focus on one case study, the hand fling gesture common to chimpanzees and humans, and provide a semantic analysis of this gesture.

The discourse of multiculturalism provides a useful means of understanding the complexities, tensions, and dilemmas that Asian and other minority women in the U.K. grapple with in their quest for human rights. However, the adoption of multiculturalist approaches has also silenced women’s voices, obscuring, for example, the role of the family in gendered violence and abuse. Focusing on the work of Southall Black Sisters, and locating this work within current debates on the intersection of government policy, cultural diversity, and feminist (...) activism, this article examines, and critiques, the Labour government’s current “multi-faith” agenda for its impact on Black and minority ethnic women in the U.K. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report on empirical work conducted to open up algorithmic interpretability and transparency. In recent years, significant concerns have arisen regarding the increasing pervasiveness of algorithms and the impact of automated decision-making in our lives. Particularly problematic is the lack of transparency surrounding the development of these algorithmic systems and their use. It is often suggested that to make algorithms more fair, they should be made more transparent, but exactly how this can be (...) achieved remains unclear. Design/methodology/approach An empirical study was conducted to begin unpacking issues around algorithmic interpretability and transparency. The study involved discussion-based experiments centred around a limited resource allocation scenario which required participants to select their most and least preferred algorithms in a particular context. In addition to collecting quantitative data about preferences, qualitative data captured participants’ expressed reasoning behind their selections. Findings Even when provided with the same information about the scenario, participants made different algorithm preference selections and rationalised their selections differently. The study results revealed diversity in participant responses but consistency in the emphasis they placed on normative concerns and the importance of context when accounting for their selections. The issues raised by participants as important to their selections resonate closely with values that have come to the fore in current debates over algorithm prevalence. Originality/value This work developed a novel empirical approach that demonstrates the value in pursuing algorithmic interpretability and transparency while also highlighting the complexities surrounding their accomplishment. (shrink)

Emotion plays a crucial role, both in general human experience and in psychiatric illnesses. Despite the importance of emotion, the relative lack of objective methodologies to scientifically studying emotional phenomena limits our current understanding and thereby calls for the development of novel methodologies, such us the study of illustrative animal models. Analysis of Drosophila and other insects has unlocked new opportunities to elucidate the behavioral phenotypes of fundamentally emotional phenomena. Here we propose an integrative model of basic emotions based on (...) observations of this animal model. The basic emotions are internal states that are modulated by neuromodulators, and these internal states are externally expressed as certain stereotypical behaviors, such as instinct, which is proposed as ancient mechanisms of survival. There are four kinds of basic emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, and anger, which are differentially associated with three core affects: reward (happiness), punishment (sadness), and stress (fear and anger). These core affects are analogous to the three primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) in that they are combined in various proportions to result in more complex “higher order” emotions, such as love and aesthetic emotion. We refer to our proposed model of emotions as called the “ Three Primary Color Model of Basic Emotions.”. (shrink)

This essay explores the notion of female embodiment and its relation to the phenomenon of religion. It explains religious beliefs, acts, and events in terms of the worship of the female body. By elucidating this standpoint, this essay hopes to reclaim the centrality of the female body and its importance in the study of philosophy of religion.

Transposable elements (TEs) have emerged as important factors in establishing the cell type‐specific gene regulatory networks and evolutionary novelty of embryonic and placental development. Recently, studies on the role of TEs and their dysregulation in cancers have shed light on the transcriptional, transpositional, and regulatory activity of TEs, revealing that the activation of developmental transcriptional programs by TEs may have a role in the dedifferentiation of cancer cells to the progenitor‐like cell states. This essay reviews the recent evidence of the (...) cis‐regulatory TEs (henceforth crTE) in normal development and malignancy as well as the key transcription factors and regulatory pathways that are implicated in both cell states, and presents existing gaps remaining to be studied, limitations of current technologies, and therapeutic possibilities. (shrink)

Answering important public health questions often requires collection of sensitive information about individuals. For example, our understanding of how HIV is transmitted and how to prevent it only came about with people's willingness to share information about their sexual and drug-using behaviors. Given the scientific need for sensitive, personal information, researchers have a corresponding ethical and legal obligation to maintain the confidentiality of data they collect and typically promise in consent forms to restrict access to it and not to publish (...) identifying data.The interests of others, however, can threaten researchers' promises of confidentiality when legal demands are made to access research data. In some cases, the subject of the litigation is tightly connected to the research questions, and litigants' interest in the data is not surprising. Researchers conducting studies on tobacco or occupational or other chemical exposures, for example, are relatively frequent targets of subpoenas. (shrink)

This study examines the endogenous relation between corporate social responsibility and tax avoidance by focusing on a common strategy of corporate tax avoidance, i.e., establishing entities in offshore tax havens. Using hand-collected data on a sample of U.S. firms, we find that firms’ CSR ratings increase substantially in the two years after they first open tax haven affiliates. We provide evidence by using the controlled foreign corporations look-through rule enacted by Congress in 2006 that facilitates offshore profit shifting. We find (...) that firms that are affected by the CFC legislation increase their CSR practices in response. Overall, our results are consistent with the risk management theory, which argues that firms hedge against the potential negative consequences of aggressive tax avoidance practices through an increase in positive CSR activities. (shrink)

The online processing of both music and language involves making predictions about upcoming material, but the relationship between prediction in these two domains is not well understood. Electrophysiological methods for studying individual differences in prediction in language processing have opened the door to new questions. Specifically, we ask whether individuals with musical training predict upcoming linguistic material more strongly and/or more accurately than non-musicians. We propose two reasons why prediction in these two domains might be linked: Musicians may have greater (...) verbal short-term/working memory; music may specifically reward predictions based on hierarchical structure. We provide suggestions as to how to expand upon recent work on individual differences in language processing to test these hypotheses. (shrink)

This Editorial introduces the thematic series on 'Toward a New Psychiatry: Philosophical and Ethical Issues in Classification, Diagnosis and Care' http://www.biomedcentral.com/series/newpsychiatry.

Background It is widely acknowledged that there is a global divide on health care and health research known as the 10/90 divide. Methods A retrospective survey of articles published in the BMJ, Lancet, NEJM, Annals of Internal Medicine & JAMA in a calendar year to examine the contribution of the developing world to medical literature. We categorized countries into four regions: UK, USA, Other Euro-American countries (OEAC) and (RoW). OEAC were European countries other than the UK but including Australia, New (...) Zealand and Canada. RoW comprised all other countries. Results The average contribution of the RoW to the research literature in the five journals was 6.5%. In the two British journals 7.6% of the articles were from the RoW; in the three American journals 4.8% of articles were from RoW. The highest proportion of papers from the RoW was in the Lancet (12%). An analysis of the authorship of 151 articles from RoW showed that 104 (68.9%) involved authorship with developed countries in Europe or North America. There were 15 original papers in these journals with data from RoW but without any authors from RoW. Conclusions There is a marked under-representation of countries in high-impact general medical journals. The ethical implications of this inequity and ways of reducing it are discussed. (shrink)

Abstract This essay discusses the paradox of the N?g?rjunian negation as presented in his Vigrahavy?vartani. In Part One it is argued that as the Naiy?yika remarks, N?g?rjuna's speech act ?No proposition has its own intrinsic thesis? seemingly contradicts his famous claim that he has no negation whatsoever. In Parts Two and Three I consider the traditional as well as modem responses to this paradox and offer my own. I argue that N?g?rjuna's speech act does not generate a paradox for two (...) reasons: (a) the equivalence thesis of the kind??P = ?P is obviously false; and (b) since N?g?rjuna's speech act is situated in the dialogical/conversational universe of discourse as opposed to the argumentative/systematic universe of discourse, the teaching of the non?intrinsic thesis of all statements that it purports, holds for all statements in its class, including itself. Lastly, it is argued that even though the N?g?rjunian speech act is not a negation situated in the argumentative universe of discourse, it serves both philosophical and soteriological purposes. (shrink)

Although in Drosophila pair‐rule genes play crucial roles in the genetic hierarchy that subdivides the embryo into segments, the extent to which pair‐rule patterning is utilized by different arthropods and other segmented phyla is unknown. Recent data of Dearden et al.1 and Henry et al.,2 however, hint that a pair‐rule mechanism might play a role in the segmentation process of basal arthropods and vertebrates. BioEssays 25:425–429, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This chapter gives a brief overview of the composition of the volume and explains why it is important to undertake a detailed scholarly analysis and comparison of the following ethico-legal regimes of surrogacy and egg donation: the permissive-unregulated but transitory regime of India; the permissive regime of Israel, although highly regulated by professional, medical and religious norms, and the extremely restrictive regime of Germany, being legally permeable for particular forms of cross-border reproductive practice despite the non-permissive national law. It uses (...) an interdisciplinary lens to examine how the ethical, social, legal and cultural issues are interwoven in each regime. Moreover, we highlight the importance of a comparative analysis to understand how local developments cannot be isolated from each other, but deeply influence each other through transnational markets, modern media and the transfer of knowledge, people and body parts. (shrink)