This article is based on qualitative research conducted in Delhi between May 2019 and October 2019 with children from the Salaam Baalak Trust (SBT) as part of a PhD. Data were collected from 30 children in focus group discussions using participatory methods, followed by semi-structured interviews. As the research was conducted among a vulnerable population (migrant street children), every effort was made to conduct the study ethically, including obtaining informed consent and upholding confidentially and anonymity. Careful consideration was given as (...) to how to tackle sensitive issues should they arise during data collection. The children agreed that the interim findings of the research would be shared with them through SBT. In addition, the researcher considered her position in the research and applied a reflexive approach to address ethical issues as they emerged. This article sets out the ethical principles applied in this research and the process followed to uphold each principle during data collection, taking into account the vulnerability of the group being studied and the context of the study (India). (shrink)

I outline key empirical evidence from my research and that of other scholars, testing the role of cultural group selection in the evolution of human cooperation, which Richerson et al. failed to mention and which fails to support the CGS hypothesis.

The advent of the internet age has impacted every sphere of modern medicine, including medical education. The new generation of trainees require novel approaches to teaching to make the requisite impacts on their minds. Conventional classroom teaching might be considered obsolete by some, especially when the subject being talked about is ethics and philosophy of medicine. An untapped resource for the teachers lies perhaps in the colossal reserve of decades of cinema. This novel concept of using movies to teach is (...) enumerated in this article by using the 1979 film “Apocalypse Now” to draw parallels between the situations occurring in the film with the ethical dilemmas that a clinician might face or philosophies that may be of utility to a physician. This article presents a conceptual framework of this ideology by exploring a film that might be considered by some to have no correlation with the queries that a medical mind might have while proving that it might not be the content of the film but the viewpoint of the teacher/trainee that may define the interpretations that may be drawn from it. Soldiers and doctors both work in a strict structure of hierarchy and are both put in situations where ethical dilemmas have life and death implications. This core philosophy has served as an inspiration for this article. (shrink)

Los derechos de las personas LGTBI están de actualidad en la sociedad del si- glo XXI. Es nuestro propósito estudiar las normas sobre orientación sexual e identidad de género en los países del Norte de Europa (Reino Unido, Irlanda, Islandia, Finlandia, Dinamarca, Noruega, Suecia, Estonia, Letonia y Lituania). Nos dedicaremos sobre todo al estudio del grado de reconocimiento del derecho al cambio de género en las leyes nacionales, así como si esas legislaciones res- petan o no el Convenio Europeo de (...) Derechos Humanos y la legislación de la Unión Europea, a través de las resoluciones del Tribunal Derechos Humanos y del Tribunal de Justicia de la Unión Europea. (shrink)

We argue that the Soros account of reflexivity does not provide a clear-cut distinction between a social science such as economics and the physical sciences. It is pointed out that the participants who attempt to learn from refutations of conjectures in the Soros world are likely to be haunted by the Duhem–Quine problem of conjointness of hypotheses and unfocused refutation. On a more constructive note, we argue that models of inductive learning, in which participants form conjectures on the basis of (...) strictly limited information sets, can capture the basic thrust of the Soros position. The conjectures are in motion, as the participants attempt to avoid those that are systematically wrong, and there is something vague and uncertain about what can be learned from experience and refutations. The only notion of market efficiency in this world is one contingent on the strictly limited and varied information sets in play. Finally we present a mathematical model and numerical simulations that help justify the causal relationship between reflexivity and far-from-equilibrium dynamics postulated by Soros. (shrink)

In light of the coronavirus pandemic, an international study (N = 1066) was conducted to explore the new bioterrorism conspiracy, faith in government, and compliance with public health guidelines related to COVID-19. Hierarchical regressions showed that while general belief in conspiracies decreased faith in government during COVID-19, it increased belief in bioterrorism regarding the coronavirus. Critical thinking was associated with decreased endorsement of biowarfare conspiracy. Higher levels of belief in bioterrorism, faith in government, and perceived risk positively facilitated compliance behavior (...) in public internationally. Interestingly, while people reported ‘worrying about others’ as their motivation to follow guidelines, ‘worrying about self’ was most strongly associated with compliance. The implications of these findings are discussed in the light of enhancing compliance with public health guidelines and effective ways of conveying them to an increasingly polarized society. (shrink)

This article shows how eco-theology could and should be indigenised in an African context using the Copperbelt in Zambia as a case study. The ecological crisis worldwide has given rise to the call for everyone to work together to start caring about our natural environment. In theology, the response to this call received the name eco-theology. By means of a literature review, ethnographic information and governmental legislation, the article tries to illustrate how eco-theology could and should be indigenised in an (...) African context using the Copperbelt in Zambia as a case study. This article makes an attempt to contribute to the needed ecological renewal by reinterpreting two traditions that inform thinking on the Copperbelt: Christianity and African traditional religion. The supernatural belief of the Lamba people is no longer embodied in this creation, and it is not too late for the people to form any indigenous environmental protection movement to protect the sacredness of mother Earth from further contamination and exploitation by strengthening, maintaining and respecting the traditional teachings and the cultural laws. Obedience to God’s command to tend creation is a quest for continued creation by humans, so that value is added to what is already in existence. This is embodied making the place we live in more beautiful, appealing and peaceful. Fruitfulness with sustainability becomes core values for interdependence and earth keeping.Contribution: We wish to address the ecological situation of the mining industry in Zambia from a theological perspective by assessing the impact of the copper mining and processing industry on humans, their environment and nature and by showing how the traditions of African traditional religion thought can be transformed into tools to oppose this ecological disaster. (shrink)

In Buddhist texts authored in Indian and Tibetan traditions of scholasticism, one is regularly directed to check one’s understanding against “scripture and reasoning.” To date, however, comparatively little attention has been given to the usage of the latter term of this pair (Skt. yukti , Tib. rigs pa) in Indian Buddhist texts. Building on the work of Scherrer-Schaub, Kapstein and others, this paper discusses divergent glosses of the term yukti as found in Indian Buddhist texts. By highlighting continuities (...) and discontinuities in these accounts, the paper aims to stimulate reflection on the ways in which our assumptions regarding reasoning—and, by extension, what is to count as “Buddhist philosophy”—are represented in, and perhaps contested by, thematizations offered within the tradition. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the key points of Nāgārjuna’s discussion of problems relating to the philosophy of language. We will focus on two works from Nāgārjuna’s yukti-corpus that address these matters most explicitly, the Vigrahavyāvartanī and the Vaidalyaprakaraṇa. The discussion will concentrate on four topics: Nāgārjuna’s views on semantics, the problem of empty names, the relation between language and momentariness, and the implications of Madhyamaka views on parts and wholes for the existence of (...) language. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the key points of Nāgārjuna’s discussion of problems relating to the philosophy of language. We will focus on two works from Nāgārjuna’s yukti-corpus that address these matters most explicitly, the Vigrahavyāvartanī and the Vaidalyaprakaraṇa. The discussion will concentrate on four topics: Nāgārjuna’s views on semantics, the problem of empty names, the relation between language and momentariness, and the implications of Madhyamaka views on parts and wholes for the existence of (...) language. (shrink)

This is a philological and critical analysis of two crucial philosophical concepts, viz., reaso and experienceâ. The study shows that, though there is no word in Sanskrit which may be taken as equivalent of Western reason and thought, such terms as tarka, yukti, nyaya, anumana, buddhi, etc., clearly capture parts or aspects of what is meant by reason and thought (Denken). Moreover, it is misleading to trans- late sruti as revelation. Construing sruti as revelation surreptitiously imports a Semitic theological (...) concept into the Vedic tradition. The case of experience is more promising because we have such Sanskrit words as anubhava or anubhuti that do translate into experience. However, experience in Western thought has acquired many shades of meaning, and the study determines in what sense the Indian anubhava captures the Western experience. Finally, the book demonstrates that Indian philosophy provides an account of the cognitive process that begins with perception and culminates in wisdom (highest experience). This whole process may be called reason, at both ends of which we can talk of experience, which places experience not in an external opposition to reason, but rather as something that belongs to it internally. Thus, the modern Western opposition between reason and experience collapses and the two toge-ther yield an integrated process of acquisition, validation, and practical application of knowledge. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Decolonizing Universality:Postcolonial Theory and the Quandary of Ethical AgencyEsha Niyogi De (bio)Living in colonial India, the Bengali thinker and creative writer Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) often meditated on ways that "concord" (milan) and "harmony" (sāmanjasya) could be established between persons and cultures [BIC 450-51]. Noting that "ruptures in balance and harmony" (bhār sāmanjasyer abhāv) that once were more localized now affected the whole world, he maintained that these reinforced the (...) progressive message of the modern age that the local "problems of a people are a part and parcel of humankind's" (swajātir samasyā samasta mānusher samasyār antargata) [RC 279]. In his view, the means to reestablish harmony in this unequal world lay in social practices and ideas conducing "freedom" (mukti) rather than enforcing "power" (shakti) and "coercive discipline" (shāsan) [SaS 408-09]. He argued that such progressive trends of practice and thought would be found not in one culture alone but through traveling across different cultural "seas of knowledge (jnān)" [SwSm 699]. For only through such conceptual journeys would we enkindle in ourselves "arguments with and doubts about" (yukti tarka o sandeher udbhav) our own cultures, and also learn from all the "voyagers in the path of progress" (unnatipather yātri) who emerge in different locations and times [SJ 39-40].As these comments reveal, Rabindranath maintained that inequalities could be rectified by making individual and collective norms and actions accountable to and measurable in terms of a speculative notion of universal humanity. While alert to the injustices proliferating from European colonization, he insisted that coercive practices and imbalances of power could not be entirely localized, and that in order to correct multiple forms of coercion we must seek across cultures and societies for (partial) achievements of human freedom and harmony. In so viewing transcultural negotiations of a common humane proclivity as the means to decolonize the world, Rabindranath did not stand alone but in a diverse company of anti-imperialist thinkers who adapted modern humanism to their ends: W. E. B. Dubois—who lauded Rabindranath's appropriation of [End Page 42] such liberal notions as democracy and equal opportunity "for greater ends" than were allowed by the "inconsistencies" of a racist European perspective [74]—Frantz Fanon, Jean-Paul Sartre, and from Rabindranath's own colonial context, the Bengali Anarchist poet Kazi Nazrul Islam (to name but a few). Reflecting upon worldwide experiences of subjection, these radical modern intellectuals tried above all to avoid reinventing separatism by declaring non-Western cultures to be unilaterally superior to Western imperialist culture. Driven by an activist ethics, they attempted instead to correct the roots of separatism through objectively evaluating, against a common frame of reference, right and wrong, relatively successful or failed practices of human empowerment and community.In this essay, I consider if and how we could characterize as "postcolonial" these evaluative ethics that rationally seek to correct coercive relations between persons and societies through referring to an affirmative idea of a human nature shared by all. If we take postcolonial agency to rest on a thorough critique of and resistance to all political and epistemic maneuvers that subordinate or exclude people and cultures, might this form of resistant agency reside in the ethical normativity of anti-imperialist humanism? This question elicits conflicting responses from contemporary postcolonial theorists.The argument, on the one hand, is that if postcolonial theory is to ethically address the multiple and interlocked hierarchies of a postimperial world, it indeed must take into account how people mobilize against separatism by working through critiques of ethnic divisiveness to negotiate a common human ground. Commenting on the universalism of thinkers such as Rabindranath Tagore and W. E. B. DuBois, Edward Said, for example, suggests that "vital" critiques of chauvinistic separatism arise only from viewing "local identity as not exhaustive" but as elaborating in reference to "larger, more generous realities of community between cultures, peoples, and societies" [Culture and Imperialism 217, 229]. His implication is that only through evaluating ourselves on the basis of a notion of noncoercive universality are we able to think against the identity politics that pervade our world, stemming at once from a nativist... (shrink)

It is commonly taken for granted that in Vedānta, as also in Indian philosophy in general, yukti, anumāna, and tarka, translate into “reason” (of Western thought) while śruti is rendered as “revelation.” I reject this translation-interpretation; it is a good example of theway in which Sanskrit philosophical discourse is often misconstrued. The term śruti does not refer to revelation, nor do yukti, anumāna, or tarka to reason. Reason, I argue, comprehends all the pramānas; these are all means of (...) legitimizing beliefs. I distinguish between different levels of the application of “reason,” and I maintain that the mere reasoner (tārkika) has not grasped the true nature of “reason.” In effect, I maintain that śabda, both lauika and alukika, is a component of reason, and so is perception. There is no concept of “revelation” in Indian philosophy, and no opposition between reason and experience. (shrink)

As its name implies, Vasubandhu’s _Vyākhyāyukti_ (VyY) explains the logic or methodology (_yukti_) of exegesis or sūtra interpretation (_vyākhyā_) and only survives in a Tibetan translation. In recent years, research on this treatise has been gradually accumulating. However, due to the difficulty of the Tibetan translation, some of the arguments therein have been misunderstood. In this article, after reviewing the general framework of Vasubandhu’s method of interpreting the sūtras, I will present a newly discovered parallel regarding his discussion of the (...) “purpose, _prayojana_” of the sūtras and reread it through a close philological examination of various sources in Sanskrit and Tibetan. Thus, this article will first elucidate the details of Vasubandhu’s explanation of the purpose of the Buddha’s preaching using synonyms and will clarify an aspect of his views on the Buddha’s word. In addition, concerning this “purpose,” I will elucidate the characteristics of the final chapter of this text, which provides stories about hearing the Buddha’s words with respect. By doing so, I would like to reveal the characteristics of the VyY as a manual for vivid preaching. (shrink)

This paper is in two parts. The first presents an analysis of the epistemology underlying the practice of classical Indian mathematical astronomy, as presented in three works of Nīlakaṇṭha Somayāji (1444–1545 CE). It is argued that the underlying concepts put great value on careful observation and skill in development of algorithms and use of computation. This is reflected in the technical terminology used to describe scientific method. The keywords in this enterprise include parīkṣā, anumāna, gaṇita, yukti, nyāya, siddhānta, tarka (...) and anveṣaṇa. The concepts that underlie these terms are analysed and compared with such ideas as theory, model, computation, positivism, empiricism etc. In a short second part, it is proposed that the primacy awarded to number and computation in classical Indian science led to an artificial language that did include equations but emphasized displays that facilitated calculation, as in the Bakshali manuscript (800 CE?). It is further argued that echoes of these concepts can be recognized in current science, where computation is once again playing a greater role triggered by spectacular developments in computer technology. (shrink)

본 논문은『十門和諍論』〈佛性有無和諍門〉에 나타난 불성 유 · 무(佛性有無)에 대한 논쟁 및 이에 대한 원효(617∼686) 해석의 특성을 검토하는 것을 목적으로 한다. 기존 연구에서는 유성 · 무성론의 논법보다 원효의 화쟁 내용이나 일심과의 관련에 초점을 두었다. 하지만『十門和諍論』의 불성 논의에는 원효의 회통 부분이 남아 있지 않다. 따라서 유성론과 무성론의 논쟁에 대한 원효 해석을 통해 화쟁 방식을 추론할 수밖에 없다는 점에서, 원효가 불성 유 · 무(佛性有無) 논의를 정리하는 방식에 대한 검토가 필요하다고 보았다.BR 이러한 시각에서 본 논문에서는 불성 유 · 무에 대한 두 입장의 타당성과 이에 대한 (...) 원효 해석의 특성을 검토하고자 한다. 이를 통해 귀류법(prasaṅga) 등 전통적 논법을 사용하면서도 오류논법 등을 포섭하여 부정을 통한 긍정으로 이쟁(異諍)을 화(和)하는 방식을 분석할 것이다. 또한 법성(dharmatā)과 도리(yukti)의 차원에서 다양한 경증과 이증을 통해 해당 논의를 회통하는 방식을 검토할 것이다.BR 『十門和諍論』잔간에서는 유성론과 무성론의 양 입장을 서술한 후, 관련 오류를 지적하는 방식으로 논의가 진행되고 있다. 단, 무성론 비판에서 경증 자체가 아니라 경증에 대한 잘못된 해석이나 논리적 오류만을 드러내는 점을 고려해 보면, 유성론 비판에서도 이와 유사한 형태를 취했을 것으로 추정된다. 특히『釋華嚴敎分記圓通鈔』의 인용내용 등에 의거할 때, 산실부에서 이어졌을 화쟁은 대승적 견지에서 양론을 동등하게 포섭했을 것으로 생각된다. 다만 부정 이후, 긍정을 유도한다는 점에서『涅槃宗要』의 긍정적 종합과 달리, ‘선별적 부정 및 관점에 따른 긍정’ 방식이 활용되었을 것으로 보인다. (shrink)