Papers presented at the conference held in 2003-2004 at Ahmedabad, India, organized by Department of Philosophy, Gujarat University.

Classical work of Hindu philosophy; with 51 Sanskrit commentaries.

Classical verse work, with commentary by Ānandabodhendrasarasvatī, expounding early Advaita philosophy.

A collection of papers presented at an international conference on Jainism and Early Buddhism in honor of Prof. Padmanabh S. Jaini, organized and hosted by the Department of the History of Religions at the University of Lund, Sweden in 1998. Prof. Jaini is professor emeritus of Buddhist Studies at University of California, Berkeley, California, USA and one of the foremost contemporary scholars of Buddhism and Jainism. The two part festschrift contains papers presented by thirty-seven prominent scholars, covering a wide range (...) of topics in both religions. (shrink)

Human agents draw a variety of inferences effortlessly, spontaneously, and with remarkable efficiency – as though these inferences were a reflexive response of their cognitive apparatus. Furthermore, these inferences are drawn with reference to a large body of background knowledge. This remarkable human ability seems paradoxical given the complexity of reasoning reported by researchers in artificial intelligence. It also poses a challenge for cognitive science and computational neuroscience: How can a system of simple and slow neuronlike elements represent a large (...) body of systemic knowledge and perform a range of inferences with such speed? We describe a computational model that takes a step toward addressing the cognitive science challenge and resolving the artificial intelligence paradox. We show how a connectionist network can encode millions of facts and rules involving n-ary predicates and variables and perform a class of inferences in a few hundred milliseconds. Efficient reasoning requires the rapid representation and propagation of dynamic bindings. Our model (which we refer to as SHRUTI) achieves this by representing (1) dynamic bindings as the synchronous firing of appropriate nodes, (2) rules as interconnection patterns that direct the propagation of rhythmic activity, and (3) long-term facts as temporal pattern-matching subnetworks. The model is consistent with recent neurophysiological evidence that synchronous activity occurs in the brain and may play a representational role in neural information processing. The model also makes specific psychologically significant predictions about the nature of reflexive reasoning. It identifies constraints on the form of rules that may participate in such reasoning and relates the capacity of the working memory underlying reflexive reasoning to biological parameters such as the lowest frequency at which nodes can sustain synchronous oscillations and the coarseness of synchronization. (shrink)

Description: Jain Philosophy : Historical Outline interprets the fundamentals of Jain philosophy from the viewpoint of their historical genesis and development and shows that the incipient stage of the Jain thought-complex agreed totally with the pythagorean approach to philosophy which was based on observed realities and was quite in harmony with the existing socio-political conditions of the time of Lord Mahavira while the sophisticated stage marked by the a priori doctrines and dogmas it had generated in course of its development (...) and by the traditionally floating ideas in regard to the belief in a eternal moral order in the universe, the law of karma, ignorance as the cause of bondage and knowledge as that of liberation, the efficacy of meditation, and so forth, was a persistent juxtaposition in the evolutionary stages of the former. Since no system of Indian philosophy allows a purely isolated treatment, a comparative study of all the philosophical systems has been made here to determine the real nature of the Jain standpoint with more emphasis on the original dynamism of Jainism which had contributed to the growth of various natural sciences, including those of biology and astronomy, on the total rejection of the concept of a supernatural agent in the form of God, on the theories of valid knowledge and on the unique logical system based on the principles of relativity. Contents Preface of the Second Edition Preface of the First Edition Chap. I : INTRODUCTION : 1. The Jains as they are 2. Researches on Jainism 3. Literary Sources 4. Archaeological Sources : Architecture and Sculpture 5. Archaeological Sources : The Epigraphs 6. Parsva and Mahavira 7. Ecclesiastical History Chap. II : THE INCIPIENT STAGE : 1. The Prehistory of Jainism 2. The Historical Background 3. Material Basis of the Great Intellectual Movement 4. The Conflicts in the History of Indian thought 5. Contemporary Philosophical Schools 6. Purana Kassapa 7. Pakudha Kaccayana 8. Makkhali Gosala 9. Sanjaya Belatthiputta 10. Ajita Kesakambalin 11. Social Experiences of Mahavira 12. The Social Basis of Jain Ethics Chap. III : THE SOPHISTICATED STAGE : 1. Jainism and Indian Philosophical Tradition 2. Jain Atheism 3. Jain Logic 4. Scientific Enquiries : Cosmology 5. Scientific Enquiries : Classification of Jiva 6. Scientific Enquiries : Biology, Physiology, Etc 7. Scientific Enquiries : Diseases and Medicines 8. Scientific Enquiries : Astronomy 9. Scientific Enquiries : Atomism 10. Jain Cosmography 11. The Unfounded Speculations and their Ethical Considerations 12. The Nine Fundamentals and the Doctrine of Karma 13. Classification of Karma and the Gunasthanas 14. A Review of the Jain Metaphysics 15. Theory of Knowledge 16. Psychological Ingredients 17. The Non-Absolutist Standpoint Chap. IV : A COMPARATIVE STUDY : 1. Jainism and Vedic Tradition 2. Jainism and Buddhism 3. Jainism and Ajivikism 4. Jainism and Materialism 5. Jainism and Samkhya 6. Jainism and Yoga 7. Jainism and Mimamsa 8. Jainism and Nyaya-Vaisesika 9. Jainism and Vedanta 10. A Subjectwise Comparative Study of the Systems. (shrink)

Basic work on Hindu logic and epistemology of the neo-Nyaya school in Hindu philosophy; portion of Tattvacintāmaṇi deals with perception.

The success of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) worldwide has led to an accumulation of frozen embryos that are surplus to the reproductive needs of those for whom they were created. In these situations, couples must decide whether to discard them or donate them for scientific research or for use by other infertile couples. While legislation and regulation may limit the decisions that couples make, their decisions are often shaped by their religious beliefs. Unfortunately, health professionals, scientists and policy-makers are often (...) unaware of the way in which faith traditions view ART and decisions concerning the ‘fate’ of surplus embryos. In this paper scholars representing six major religious traditions provide a commentary on a hypothetical case concerning the donation or destruction of excess ART embryos. These commentaries provide a rich account of religious perspectives on the status of the human embryo and an insight into the relevance of faith to health and policy decisions, particularly in reproductive medicine, ART and embryo research. (shrink)

This paper reviews the fate of the central ideas behind the complementary learning systems (CLS) framework as originally articulated in McClelland, McNaughton, and O’Reilly (1995). This framework explains why the brain requires two differentially specialized learning and memory systems, and it nicely specifies their central properties (i.e., the hippocampus as a sparse, pattern-separated system for rapidly learning episodic memories, and the neocortex as a distributed, overlapping system for gradually integrating across episodes to extract latent semantic structure). We review the application (...) of the CLS framework to a range of important topics, including the following: the basic neural processes of hippocampal memory encoding and recall, conjunctive encoding, human recognition memory, consolidation of initial hippocampal learning in cortex, dynamic modulation of encoding versus recall, and the synergistic interactions between hippocampus and neocortex. Overall, the CLS framework remains a vital theoretical force in the field, with the empirical data over the past 15 years generally confirming its key principles. (shrink)

Recently a gender-selective harvesting strategy has been proposed for possible control of aquatic invasive species, wherein females of the invasive species are harvested, whilst stocking the males (abbreviated as FHMS strategy) (Lyu et al. in Nat Resour Model 33(2):e12252, 2020). We consider the FHMS strategy with a weak Allee effect, and show that its extinction boundary need not be hyperbolic. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example of a non-hyperbolic extinction boundary in two-compartment mating models structured (...) by sex. The model possesses a rich dynamical structure, with several local co-dimension one bifurcations occurring. We also show the occurrence of a global homoclinic bifurcation, which has applicability for large scale strategic bio-control. (shrink)

Although the connectionist approach has lead to elegant solutions to a number of problems in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, its suitability for dealing with problems in knowledge representation and inference has often been questioned. This paper partly answers this criticism by demonstrating that effective solutions to certain problems in knowledge representation and limited inference can be found by adopting a connectionist approach. The paper presents a connectionist realization of semantic networks, that is, it describes how knowledge about concepts, their (...) properties, and the hierarchical relationship between them may be encoded as an interpreter‐free massively parallel network of simple processing elements that can solve an interesting class of inheritance and recognition problems extremely fast—in time proportional to the depth of the conceptual hierarchy. The connectionist realization is based on an evidential formulation that leads to principled solutions to the problems of exceptions and conflicting multiple inheritance situations during inheritance, and the best‐match or partial‐match computation during recognition. The paper also identifies constraints that must be satisfied by the conceptual structure in order to arrive at an efficient parallel realization. (shrink)

Contrary to the assertions made in the target article, temporal synchrony, coupled with an appropriate choice of representational primitives, leads to a functionally adequate and neurally plausible architecture that addresses the massiveness of the binding problem, the problem of 2, the problem of variables, and the transformation of activity-based transient representations of events and situations into structure-based persistent encodings of the same.

Lithium, despite its simple structure, has numerous biological effects. It also has a remarkable therapeutic effect in the prophylactic treatment of manic depression, and is finding a role in controlling aggressive and self‐mutilating behavior. The special feature of lithium is that it only acts on overactive systems to bring them back to normal, without affecting the stable system. The mechanisms of action of this simple cation are still largely unknown although the inositol depletion theory is the most widely accepted model. (...) A recent paper(1) described a different molecular mechanism for its effect on development, which may also explain its action in manic depression. (shrink)

Study of Tattvacintāmaṇididhiti of Raghunātha Śiromaṇi, commentary on Pakṣatā, portion of Tattvacintāmaṇi of Gaṅgeśa, dealing with the essential nature of proposition (pakṣatā), of Navya Nyāya school in Hindu philosophy.

In response to Ferrario _et al_’s 1 work entitled ‘Ethics of the algorithmic prediction of goal of care preferences: from theory to practice’, we would like to point out an area of concern: the risk of artificial intelligence (AI) paternalism in their proposed framework. Accordingly, in this commentary, we underscore the importance of the implementation of safeguards for AI algorithms before they are deployed in clinical practice. The goal of documenting a living will and advanced directives is to convey personal (...) preferences regarding the acceptance of therapies, including life support, for future use in case of losing one’s capacity. This is standard practice in the care of incapacitated critically ill patients as it is considered to extend the individual’s autonomy. Notably, most of the documents that intensivists encounter in clinical practice are written in a generic fashion and lack context. This problem usually leads to the reliance on... (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to identify the major factors influencing the adoption of health-care wearables in generation Z (Gen Z) customers in India. A conceptual framework using push pull and mooring (PPM) adoption theory was developed.Design/methodology/approachData was collected from 208 Gen Z customers based on 5 constructs related to the adoption of health-care wearables. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling was used to analyse the responses. The mediation paths were analysed using bootstrapping method and examination of the (...) standardized direct and indirect effects in the model.FindingsThe study results indicated that the antecedent factors consisted of push (real-time health information availability), pull (normative environment) and mooring (decision self-efficacy) factors. The mooring factor (MOOR) was related to the push factor but not the pull factor. The MOOR, in turn, was related to the switching intention of Gen Z customers for health wearables adoption.Research limitations/implicationsThe research study extended the literature related to the PPM theory in the context of the adoption of health wearables among Gen Z customers in India.Practical implicationsThe study outcome would enable managers working in health wearable organizations to understand consumer behaviour towards health wearables.Social implicationsThe use of health wearables among Gen Z individuals would lead to future generations adopting a healthy lifestyle resulting in an effective workforce and better economy.Originality/valueThis was one of the few studies which have explored the PPM theory to explore the factors for the adoption of health wearables among Gen Z customers in India. (shrink)

A defining characteristic of modern science is its ability to make immensely successful predictions of natural phenomena without invoking a putative god or a supernatural being. Here, we argue that this intellectual discipline would not acquire such an ability without the mathematical zero. We insist that zero and its basic operations were likely conceived in India based on a philosophy of nothing, and classify nothing into four categories—balance, absence, emptiness and nonexistence. We argue that zero is a tangible representation of (...) nonexistence and constitutes all nonzero numbers, which together represent existence. It appears that zero’s journey out of India somewhat separated its mathematical and philosophical aspects, with the former being more valued by some cultures and the latter by others. The European culture, in which modern science grew, largely ignores a philosophy of nothing due to a deep-rooted Greek philosophical base, although this science relies on the notion of nonexistence through zero. Consequently, zero is a mere number of convenience without its foundational philosophy in science, and techniques to circumvent zero are developed. We insist that, while such techniques contribute to the progress of science and mathematics within the current framework, a tendency to avoid zero and its philosophy leads to approximations and may hinder a deeper understanding. Finally, we argue that nonexistence may notionally constitute existence, and hence may be the fundamental. This implies that, if a supernatural being exists, it is not the fundamental. The independence of modern science from a supernatural being is consistent with this. (shrink)

The paper analyzes dewey's two different philosophical accounts of intelligence, one as a method of adjustment within given situations, and the other as creative of new ends and means for the realization of those ends. it also points out that these two accounts of intelligence are not mutually exclusive; and we have in their combination a parallel with scientific method, in which resolution of a specific problem requires imaginative theorizing. it is also shown that dewey's concept of 'intelligence' requires the (...) formation of certain intellectual and moral dispositions, and that reflection can become enlightened striving only when it is sustained and guided by those dispositions. (shrink)

The classical theory of rational choice is built on several important internal consistency conditions. In recent years, the reasonableness of those internal consistency conditions has been questioned and criticized, and several responses to accommodate such criticisms have been proposed in the literature. This paper develops a general framework to accommodate the issues raised by the criticisms of classical rational choice theory, and examines the broad impact of these criticisms from both normative and positive points of view.

Culture, livelihoods and political-economic status all influence people's perception of introduced and invasive species, shaping perspectives on what sort of management of them, if any, is warranted. Indigenous voices and values are under-represented in scholarly discourse about introduced and invasive species. This paper examines the relationship between the Xeni Gwet'in First Nation (one of six Tsilhqot'in communities) and wild or free-roaming horses in British Columbia, Canada. We outline how Xeni Gwet'in people value horses and experience management actions, contextualising the controversy (...) over wild horses amidst power imbalances in the expression of environmental values. We suggest that Indigenous voices are vital to include when evaluating impacts of controversial species and developing management strategies. (shrink)

Unification of natural science and social science is a centuries-old, unmitigated debate. Natural science has a chronological advantage over social science because the latter took time to include many social phenomena in its fold. History of science witnessed quite a number of efforts by social scientists to fit this discipline in a rational if not mathematical framework. On the other hand a tendency among some physicists has been observed especially since the last century to recast a number of social phenomena (...) in the mould of events taking place in physical world and governed by well-known systems and equations of physics. It necessitated the introduction of social physics as a new inter-disciplinary subject. Obviously this attempt is aimed at explaining hitherto unsolved or highly debated issues of social science. Physicists are showing special interest on problems on economics, ranging from some topics of normative economics to the movement of prices of derivatives. Statistics has been widely used in these attempts and at least two sub-disciplines of the subject, namely, stochastic process and time series analysis deserve special mention. All these research activities gave birth to another inter-disciplinary subject named as econophysics. Interestingly, global financial crisis of 2007–08 has revived the need of determination of prices of derivatives in a more accurate manner. This article adumbrates a sketch of the theoretical synthesis between physics and economics and the role played by statistics in this process. (shrink)

This essay explores the history of the silty sediments that make up the littorals of the Bengal Delta to see how they emerged as an object of scientific inquiry and as part of a hydrosocial and political history. By using the conceptual framing of hydrosociality, the piece investigates the political and legal possibilities of amphibious landscapes to document the colonial legal engagement with and scientific puzzlement over these silty sediments and their postcolonial afterlives. As temporary landscapes, silts and sediments pose (...) a unique problem for historians, for they leave scanty archival traces. When they emerge in the state archive it is as sites of conflict, rather than sites of life. They also emerge as a problem for science to map and solve. This essay gathers some snippets of the fragmentary journey of shoals as they emerge and disappear in the scientific and legal archive. Focusing on three moments of interruption in the colonial and postcolonial encounters with the littorals of the Bengal Delta, it argues that the inability of scientific discourse to come up with a conceptual grammar was conducive to new legal articulations about these spaces. Unfortunately, the consequences of this are playing out in the contemporary moment as a humanitarian crisis. (shrink)

Analytical study of the concept of creation and perception in Vedāntasiddhāntamuktāvalī, treatise on Hindu Advaita (non-dualistic) Vedanta philosophy by Prakāśānanda, 16th cent.

The decimation of the Sundarbans has resulted from attempts to satisfy short-term demands by exhausting the chances of satisfying future demands. The forest cannot be preserved by a policy that under-valorizes the urgency of the short-term needs or by a policy that is imposed from above, but it may be by social forestry. Social forestry augments the supply of forest products from non-forest lands, and, most significantly, includes the users in developing appropriate forest policies.

This book is the first English translation of the classic philosophical treatise Kantadarsaner Tatparyya . Bhattacharyya combines the basic tenets of Kant to present it in terms of Indian philosophical traditions. The introduction discusses the need for the translation, the challenges involved, and the context of Bhattacharyya's interpretations and thought. The detailed notes and annotations to the translation guide the reader through a variety of concepts in Western and Indian philosophy, as well as comments on the Bengali text. (...) This book will be of considerable interest to scholars, teachers, and students of Western and Indian philosophy. (shrink)

Lange & Dyer misunderstand what is meant by an “entity” and confuse a medium of representation with the content being represented. This leads them to the erroneous conclusion that SHRUTI will run out of phases and that its representation of bindings lacks semantic content. It is argued that the limit on the number of phases suffices, and SHRUTI can be interpreted as using “dynamic signatures” that offer significant advantages over fixed preexisting signatures. Bonatti refers to three levels of commitment to (...) a representational theory of the mind and states that SHRUTI is committed to RTM at levels 1 and 2. He acknowledges that SHRUTI is not committed at level 3, but argues that an extended SHRUTI would have to make such a commitment. We agree that SHRUTI is committed to RTM at level 1 and, in a sense, also at level 2. SHRUTI, however, is not committed to RTM at level 3 and, even though it has been extended in several ways, it has retained its original representational character. (shrink)

Papers presented at a seminar held at Department of Philosophy, University of Calcutta from March 15-16, 2011.

Languages with insufficient digitally available resources, such as, Indian–Indian and English–Indian language Machine Translation system developments, faces the difficulty to translate various lexical phenomena. In this paper, we present our work on a comparative study of 440 phrase-based statistical trained models for 110 language pairs across 11 Indian languages. We have developed 110 baseline statistical machine translation systems. Then, we have augmented the training corpus with Indowordnet synset word entries of lexical database and further trained 110 models on top of (...) the baseline system. We have done a detailed performance comparison using various evaluation metrics such as BLEU score, METEOR, and TER. We observed significant improvement in evaluations of translation quality across all the 440 models after using the Indowordnet. These experiments give a detailed insight in two ways: usage of lexical database with synset mapping for resource poor languages and efficient usage of Indowordnet synset mapping. Moreover, synset mapped lexical entries helped the SMT system to handle the ambiguity to a great extent during the translation. (shrink)

Chapter I. Phenomenology and psychology -- chapter II. The phenomenological concept of consciousness-the concept of interntionality and its relevance for psychology -- chapter III. Behaviourism and phenomenology -- chapter IV. Phenomenology and Gestalt psychology -- chapter V. Sartre's constribution to phenomenological psychology -- chapter VI. Max Scheler on the nature of sympathy -- chapter VII. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological psychology -- chapter VIII. A concluding assessment of phenomenological psychology.

Study of Saṅkṣepaśārīraka of Sarvajñātman, condensed version of Śārīrakamīmāṃsābhāṣya of Śaṅkarācārya, work on Advaita Vedanta philosophy.

Most universities solicit feedback from students at the end of a course in order to assess student perceptions of the course. This feedback is used for various objectives, including for evaluating teaching by academic administrators. One would therefore expect faculty to rationally take this into account while formulating their teaching strategy. In certain cases, such strategic considerations can give rise to moral hazard. I have modelled the situation using the well-known Prisoners Dilemma game and found that in equilibrium, the teaching (...) style will be examination-centric, while considerations of societal good would demand that the teaching style be knowledge-centric. I also discuss the policy implications for this finding. (shrink)

On the problems of epistemology as depicted in the Jaina canonical literature; a study.