Traditional ethical discourses give little significance to the role of body, and highlight has been largely on human mind and consciousness. The idea of good and bad, right and wrong, desirable and undesirable—as binaries—is seen as articulated through the latter. Philosophical theories that articulate the significance of body and movement are very few—phenomenology as one among these few. Body, as site for ethic, calls for some significant philosophical considerations. The paper attempts to join phenomenological theorizing on lived-body and engages with (...) the issues of moral desirability. It also argues that moral discourse as structurally built on the idea of reciprocity is inadvertently about first-person lived-bodies interacting with one another. (shrink)

PurposeThe intent of this study is to make a vigilant reading of Kotta Satchidananda Murty with special reference to his The Indian Spirit that has much relevance in today’s philosophical discourse in India. This study also aims at showing how the works of contemporary Indian thinkers excite one to search for new philosophical avenues by basing oneself on the tradition, yet creating ideas anew.MethodologyThe first part of the paper is an epigrammatic unearthing of the central ideas in K. Satchidananda Murty’s (...) The Indian Spirit, while the second part is my analysis of the strengths and limitations of Murty, the heterodox insider of The Indian Spirit. In the third part, by taking cue from Murty’s The Indian Spirit, I conclude with submission that Indian philosophical tradition is like a ‘salad bowl’ with its unique diversity and plurality.Result and ConclusionA thorough reading of Murty would make one consider him as a ‘heterodox insider’ in Indian philosophy in general, and Hindu tradition in particular. One of the major points that he brings home is a counteractive to the uninformed generalization about Indian thought that the philosophical tradition of India was one of an unbroken idealism or spiritualism. According to Murty, Philosophy in India has been like a ‘salad bowl’ where different convictions and ideologies find their place and significance without getting merged into a ‘melting pot’ of uniformity. A vigilant reading of Murty makes it clear that he had a critical, not a conventional-conformist, view with regard to Indian philosophy, and this stands out to be the philosophical ingenuity in him. However, the ‘heterodox insider’ one finds in Murty is context-sensitive and sounds like an apologetic occasionally. (shrink)

In order to assess and understand human behavior, traditional approaches to experimental design incorporate testing tools that are often artificial and devoid of corporeal features. Whilst these offer experimental control in situations in which, methodologically, real behaviors cannot be examined, there is increasing evidence that responses given in these contextually deprived experiments fail to trigger genuine responses. This may result from a lack of consideration regarding the material makeup and associations connected with the fabric of experimental tools. In a two-year (...) collaboration, we began to experiment with the physicality of testing tools using the domain of moral psychology as a case study. This collaboration involved thinkering and prototyping methods that included direct contact and consideration of the materials involved in experimentation. Having explored the embodied nature of morality, we combined approaches from experimental psychology, moral philosophy, design thinking, and computer science to create a new testing tool for simulated moral behavior. Although the testing tool itself generated fruitful results, this paper considers the collaborative methodology through which it was produced as a route to highlight material questions within psychological research. (shrink)