Companies committed to corporate social responsibility should ensure that their managers possess the appropriate competencies to effectively manage the CSR adaptation process. The literature provides insights into the individual competencies these managers need but fails to prioritize them and adequately contextualize them in a manner that makes them meaningful in practice. In this study, we contextualized the competencies within the different job roles CSR managers have in the CSR adaptation process. We interviewed 28 CSR managers, followed by a survey to (...) explore the relative importance of the competencies within each job role. Based on our analysis, we identified six distinct managerial roles, including strategic, coordinating, and stimulating roles. Next, we identified per role key individual CSR-related competencies as prioritized by the respondents. Our results show that the context, as indicated in this study by CSR managers’ job roles, indeed influenced the importance of particular CSR-related competencies, because each role seems to require a different combination and prioritization of these competencies. Moreover, the results suggest that the relative importance of these competencies within each role may be driven by business logic rather than an idealistic logic. The results are presented as a competence profile which can serve as a reflection tool and as a frame of reference to further develop the competence profile for CSR managers. (shrink)

Because corporate social responsibility can be beneficial to both companies and its stakeholders, interest in factors that support CSR performance has grown in recent years. A thorough integration of CSR in core business processes is particularly important for achieving effective long-term CSR practices. Here, we explored the individual CSR-related competencies that support CSR implementation in a corporate context. First, a systematic literature review was performed in which relevant scientific articles were identified and analyzed. Next, 28 CSR directors and managers were (...) interviewed. The literature review complemented with interview data resulted in the following eight distinct CSR-related competencies: Anticipating CSR challenges; Understanding CSR-relevant systems and subsystems; Understanding CSR-relevant standards; CSR management competencies, including Leading CSR programs, Managing CSR programs, and Identifying and realizing CSR-related business opportunities; Realizing CSR-supportive interpersonal processes; Employing CSR-supportive personal characteristics and attitudes; Personal value-driven competencies, including Ethical normative competencies, Balancing personal ethical values and business objectives, and Realizing self-regulated CSR-related behaviors and active involvement; and Reflecting on personal CSR views and experiences. Based on these results, implications for further research on this topic, as well as implications for practitioners, are discussed. (shrink)

Th e present article reports a series of experiments designed to extend the empirical investigation of folk metaethical intuitions by examining how different kinds of ethical disagreement can impact attributions of objectivity to ethical claims.

Deontological internalism is the family of views where justification is a positive deontological appraisal of someone's epistemic agency: S is justified, that is, when S is blameless, praiseworthy, or responsible in believing that p. Brian Weatherson discusses very briefly how a plausible principle of ampliative transmission reveals a worry for versions of deontological internalism formulated in terms of epistemic blame. Weatherson denies, however, that similar principles reveal similar worries for other versions. I disagree. In this article, I argue that plausible (...) principles of ampliative transmission reveal a worry for deontological internalism in general. (shrink)

This paper defends a novel account of how to determine the intrinsic value of possible worlds. Section 1 argues that a highly intuitive and widely accepted account leads to undesirable consequences. Section 2 takes the first of two steps towards a novel account by clarifying and defending a view about value-contribution that is based on some of W. D. Ross’ claims about the value of pleasure. Section 3 takes the second step by clarifying and defending a view about value-suppression that (...) is based on Ross’ claims about the interplay between prima-facie duties. Section 4 states and defends the account that I call Rossian Totalism. According to this account, the atoms of intrinsic value within a world only sometimes contribute their intrinsic value to the value of that world. (shrink)

My argument in this paper is that humility is implied in the concept of teaching, if teaching is construed in a strong sense. Teaching in a strong sense is a view of teaching as linked to students’ embodied experiences (including cognitive and moral-social dimensions), in particular students’ experiences of limitation, whereas a weak sense of teaching refers to teaching as narrowly focused on student cognitive development. In addition to detailing the relation between humility and strong sense teaching, I will also (...) argue that humility is acquired through the practice of teaching. My discussion connects to the growing interest, especially in virtue epistemology discourse, in the idea that teachers should educate for virtues. Drawing upon John Dewey and contemporary virtue epistemology discourse, I discuss humility, paying particular attention to an overlooked aspect of humility that I refer to as the educative dimension of humility. I then connect this concept of humility to the notion of teaching in a strong sense. In the final section, I discuss how humility in teaching is learned in the practice of teaching by listening to students in particular ways. In addition, I make connections between my concept of teaching and the practice of cultivating students’ virtues. I conclude with a critique of common practices of evaluating good teaching, which I situate within the context of international educational policy on teacher evaluation. (shrink)

We report the results of four empirical studies designed to investigate the extent to which an epistemic closure principle for knowledge is reflected in folk epistemology. Previous work by Turri (2015a) suggested that our shared epistemic practices may only include a source-relative closure principle—one that applies to perceptual beliefs but not to inferential beliefs. We argue that the results of our studies provide reason for thinking that individuals are making a performance error when their knowledge attributions and denials conflict with (...) the closure principle. When we used research materials that overcome what we think are difficulties with Turri’s original materials, we found that participants did not reject closure. Furthermore, when we presented Turri’s original materials to non-philosophers with expertise in deductive reasoning (viz., professional mathematicians), they endorsed closure for both perceptual and inferential beliefs. Our results suggest that an unrestricted closure principle—one that applies to all beliefs, regardless of their source—provides a better model of folk patterns of knowledge attribution than a source-relative closure principle. (shrink)

This book is the first comprehensive study of the meaning and measure of enforceability. While we have long debated what restraints should govern the conduct of our social life, we have paid relatively little attention to the question of what it means to make a restraint enforceable. Focusing on the enforceability of legal rights but also addressing the enforceability of moral rights and social conventions, Mark Reiff explains how we use punishment and compensation to make restraints operative in the world. (...) After describing the various means by which restraints may be enforced, Reiff explains how the sufficiency of enforcement can be measured, and he presents a unified theory of deterrence, retribution, and compensation that shows how these aspects of enforceability are interconnected. Reiff then applies his theory of enforceability to illuminate a variety of real-world problem situations. (shrink)

I try to return the focus of the philosophy of history to the nature of understanding, with a particular emphasis on Louis Mink’s project of exploring how historical understanding compares to the understanding we find in the natural sciences. On the whole, I come to a conclusion that Mink almost certainly would not have liked: that the understanding offered by history has a very similar epistemic profile to the understanding offered by the sciences, a similarity that stems from the fact (...) that both are concerned with grasping how the objects of their study are structured, or how the various elements of the things they study depend upon and relate to one another. At the same time, however, I claim that historical inquiry naturally puts us in a position to acquire further epistemic goods, including the old-fashioned epistemic good of wisdom, which is plausibly constituted by knowledge of how to live well. This is something the natural sciences cannot offer, and it is part of the reason why history is such an important form of inquiry. (shrink)

I apply the notion of truthmaking to the topic of fundamentality by articulating a truthmaker theory of fundamentality according to which some truths are truth-grounded in certain entities while the ones that don't stand in a metaphysical-semantic relation to the truths that do. I motivate this view by critically discussing two problems with Ross Cameron's truthmaker theory of fundamentality. I then defend this view against Theodore Sider's objection that the truthmaking approach to fundamentality violates the purity constraint. Truthmaker theorists can (...) have a trouble-free theory of fundamentality. (shrink)

A reply to Patrick Stokes' “Between Generalism and Particularism About Conspiracy Theory".

Experimental philosophers have investigated various ways in which non‐epistemic evaluations can affect knowledge attributions. For example, several teams of researchers (Beebe and Buckwalter 2010; Beebe and Jensen 2012; Schaffer and Knobe 2012; Beebe and Shea 2013; Buckwalter 2014b; Turri 2014) report that the goodness or badness of an agent’s action can affect whether the agent is taken to have certain kinds of knowledge. These findings raise important questions about how patterns of folk knowledge attributions should influence philosophical theorizing about knowledge.

A response to Lee Basham's 'The Need for Accountable Witnesses: A Reply to Dentith'.

Aside from bioethics, the main theme of Ronald Green's lifework has been an exploration of the relation between religion and morality, with special emphasis on the philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Søren Kierkegaard. This essay summarizes and assesses his work on this theme by examining, in turn, four of his relevant books. Religious Reason introduced a new method of comparative religion based on Kant's model of a rational religion. Religion and Moral Reason expanded on this project, clarifying that religious traditions (...) cannot be reduced to their moral grounding. Kierkegaard and Kant: The Hidden Debt offered bold new evidence that Kant, not Hegel, was the philosopher whose ideas primarily shaped Kierkegaard's overtly religious philosophy; both philosophers focused on the problem of how to understand the relation between moral reasoning and historical religion. And Kant and Kierkegaard on Time and Eternity republished ten essays that explore various aspects of this theme in greater depth. I argue that throughout these works Green defends a “paradox of inwardness”: principles or ideals that are by their nature essentially inward end up requiring outward manifestation in order to be confirmed or fully justified as real. (shrink)

There is an important sense in which one can be sure without being certain, i.e., without assigning unit probability. I will offer an explication of this sense of sureness, connecting it with the level of credence that a rational agent would need to have to be confident that she won’t ever lose her confidence. A simple formal result then gives us an explicit formula connecting the threshold α for credence needed for confidence with the threshold needed for being sure: one (...) needs 1−(1−α) to be sure. I then suggest that stepping between α and 1−(1−α) gives a procedure that generates an interesting hierarchy of credential thresholds. (shrink)

Statistics play a critical role in biological and clinical research. However, most reports of scientific results in the published literature make it difficult for the reader to reproduce the statistical analyses performed in achieving those results because they provide inadequate documentation of the statistical tests and algorithms applied. The Ontology of Biological and Clinical Statistics (OBCS) is put forward here as a step towards solving this problem. Terms in OBCS, including ‘data collection’, ‘data transformation in statistics’, ‘data visualization’, ‘statistical data (...) analysis’, and ‘drawing a conclusion based on data’, cover the major types of statistical processes used in basic biological research and clinical outcome studies. OBCS is aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and extends the Ontology of Biomedical Investigations (OBI), an OBO (Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies) Foundry ontology supported by over 20 research communities. We discuss two examples illustrating how the ontology is being applied. In the first (biological) use case, we describe how OBCS was applied to represent the high throughput microarray data analysis of immunological transcriptional profiles in human subjects vaccinated with an influenza vaccine. In the second (clinical outcomes) use case, we applied OBCS to represent the processing of electronic health care data to determine the associations between hospital staffing levels and patient mortality. Our case studies were designed to show how OBCS can be used for the consistent representation of statistical analysis pipelines under two different research paradigms. By representing statistics-related terms and their relations in a rigorous fashion, OBCS facilitates standard data analysis and integration, and supports reproducible biological and clinical research. (shrink)

Ever since John Locke, philosophers have discussed the possibility of a normative epistemology: are there epistemic obligations binding the cognitive economy of belief and disbelief? Locke's influential answer was evidentialist: we have an epistemic obligation to believe in accordance with our evidence. In this dissertation, I place the contemporary literature on agency and reasons at the service of some such normative epistemology. I discuss the semantics of obligations, the connection between obligations and reasons to believe, the implausibility of Lockean evidentialism, (...) and some of the alleged connections between agency and justification. (shrink)

Coronavirus disease has a crisis with high spread throughout the world during the COVID19 pandemic period. This disease can be easily spread to a group of people and increase the spread. Since it is a worldly disease and not plenty of vaccines available, social distancing is the only best approach to defend against the pandemic situation. All the affected countries' governments declared locked-down to implement social distancing. This social separation and persons not being in a mass group can slow down (...) the spread of COVID19. It reduces the physical contact between infected persons and normal healthy persons. Almost every health organization tells that to follow social distancing people should maintain at least 6 feet of distance from each other. This research proposes a deep learning approach for social distancing which is developed for tracking and detecting people who are in indoor as well as outdoor scenarios using YOLO V3 video analytic technique. This approach focuses to inspect whether the people are maintaining social distancing in many areas, using surveillance video with measuring the distance in real-time performance. Most of the early studies of detecting social distance monitoring were based on GPS for tracking the movements of people where the signals could be lost. On the other hand, some countries use drones to detect large gatherings of people who cannot have a clear view at night times [10]. In the future, the proposed system can be used fully for detecting threats in the public crowded or it can detect any person affected by critical situations (ie fainting, Cordia arrest) or planting the crops in the forms evenly with a uniform measurement. This proposal could be used in many fields like crowd analysis, autonomous vehicles, and human action recognition and could help the government authorities to redesign the public place layout and take precautionary action in the risk zones. This system analyses the social distancing of people by calculating the distance between people to slow downing the spread of the COVID 19 virus. (shrink)

I provide a critical survey of some of the major findings of Wittgenstein and Searle on the logical structure of intentionality (mind, language, behavior), taking as my starting point Wittgenstein’s fundamental discovery –that all truly ‘philosophical’ problems are the same—confusions about how to use language in a particular context, and so all solutions are the same—looking at how language can be used in the context at issue so that its truth conditions (Conditions of Satisfaction or COS) are clear. The basic (...) problem is that one can say anything but one cannot mean (state clear COS for) any arbitrary utterance and meaning is only possible in a very specific context. I begin with ‘On Certainty’ and continue the analysis of recent writings by and about them from the perspective of the two systems of thought, employing a new table of intentionality and new dual systems nomenclature. (shrink)

After half a century in oblivion, the nature of consciousness is now the hottest topic in the behavioral sciences and philosophy. Beginning with the pioneering work of Ludwig Wittgenstein in the 1930’s (the Blue and Brown Books) and from the 50’s to the present by his logical successor John Searle, I have created the following table as an heuristic for furthering this study. The rows show various aspects or ways of studying and the columns show the involuntary processes and voluntary (...) behaviors comprising the two systems (dual processes) of the Logical Structure of Consciousness (LSC), which can also be regarded as the Logical Structure of Rationality (LSR-Searle), of behavior (LSB), of personality (LSB), of reality (LSOR), of Intentionality (LSI) -the classical philosophical term, the Descriptive Psychology of Consciousness (DPC) , the Descriptive Psychology of Thought (DPT) –or better, the Language of the Descriptive Psychology of Thought (LDPT), terms introduced here and in my other very recent writings. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019). (shrink)

Near the end of December 2019, the globe was hit with a major crisis, which is nothing but the coronavirusbased pandemic. The authorities at the train station should also keep in mind the need to limit the spread of the covid virus in the event of a global pandemic. When it comes to controlling the COVID-19 epidemic, public transportation facilities like train stations play a pivotal role because of the proximity of so many people who may be exposed to the (...) virus. Using common place CCTV cameras and deep learning with simple online and real-time (DeepSORT) methods, this study develops social distance monitoring using a YOLOv4 identification of a Surveillance Object Model. Based on experiments conducted with a minicomputer equipped with an Intel 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-1115G4 at 3.00GHz, 2995 Mhz, two Core(s), four Logical processor, four gigabytes of random-access memory (RAM), this paper makes use of CCTV surveillance, which was put into practice at the Guindy railway station, Chennai, Tamilnadu in India in order to detect the violation of social distancing. (shrink)

This book delves into esoteric knowledge, describing the structure of the universe (Brahmanda or Cosmic Egg) as a series of astral biospheres. These biospheres, or lokas, are linked to spiritual consciousness and degrees of divine bliss (Ananda). Advanced spiritual figures, such as Rishis and Mahatmas, can navigate these realms and help others evolve. The article presents a detailed comparison between “Puranic Hinduism” and “Sanatana Dharma”, specifically addressing their differences in cosmogenesis and spiritual evolution. The difference between the cosmogenesis of Puranic (...) Hinduism and Sanatana Dharma is that while the former is founded on the concept of Trimurti as taught by the Puranas, the latter is a Manu-centric and Guru-centric spiritual system. This has a lot of significance concerning the rituals and the social order they have produced. Here, the Cosmic Purusha is identifiable with Manu, not with Trimurti or the God of Abrahamic religions, because of their different spiritual status in the cosmological hierarchy. (shrink)

We examine the discussion about the definition of knowledge as true judgment accompanied by logos in Theaetetus 201c-210c, in order to ascertain which of the recent alternative interpretations is more consistent with the text. To accomplish this, we intend to analyze the text and explore in detail the secondary literature about it.

This collection of articles was written over the last 10 years and the most important and longest within the last year. Also I have edited them to bring them up to date (2016). All the articles are about human behavior (as are all articles by anyone about anything), and so about the limitations of having a recent monkey ancestry (8 million years or much less depending on viewpoint) and manifest words and deeds within the framework of our innate psychology as (...) presented in the table of intentionality. As famous evolutionist Richard Leakey says, it is critical to keep in mind not that we evolved from apes, but that in every important way, we are apes. If everyone was given a real understanding of this (i.e., human ecology and psychology) in school, maybe civilization would have a chance. In my view these articles and reviews have many novel and highly useful elements, in that they use my own version of the recently (ca. 1980’s) developed dual systems view of our brain and behavior to lay out a logical system of rationality (personality, psychology, mind, language, behavior, thought, reasoning, reality etc.) that is sorely lacking in the behavioral sciences (psychology, philosophy, literature, politics, anthropology, history, economics, sociology etc.). (shrink)

The COVID-19 outbreak has had a significant influence on the health of people all across the world, and preventing its further spread requires an early and correct diagnosis. Imaging using X-rays is often used to identify respiratory disorders like COVID-19, and approaches based on machine learning may be used to automate the diagnostic process. In this research, we present a deep learning approach for COVID-19 identification in X-ray pictures utilizing global thresholding. Our framework consists of two main components: (1) global (...) thresholding to preprocess X-ray images and extract features, and (2) a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for classifying the images as positive (indicating COVID-19) or negative (indicating no COVID-19). Global thresholding is used to convert X-ray images into binary images, which can highlight the features of interest, such as lung opacity. The Network is instructed to use a dataset consisting of X-ray pictures that have been labeled with the COVID-19 status of each image. The usefulness of our approach was shown by experimental findings obtained using a dataset of X-ray pictures that were made accessible to the public. We achieve high accuracy in COVID-19 detection, outperforming traditional machine learning techniques. Our framework is also able to correctly identify COVID-19 in images that were misclassified by human experts. (shrink)

The exploration of the mind is a fundamental pursuit spanning philosophy and psychology, with implications reaching into diverse practical realms. This paper delves into the intricacies of mental states, examining historical perspectives from ancient philosophers to modern theorists. Philosophical inquiries into intentionality, consciousness, and the nature of mental phenomena are scrutinized, alongside empirical investigations by psychologists. The discourse navigates through contrasting theories such as dualism, materialism, and functionalism, shedding light on the challenges of reconciling subjective experiences with objective observations. The (...) problem of other minds and the tension between internalism and externalism are dissected, revealing the complex interplay between individual cognition and external influences. Ultimately, this analysis underscores the intricate nature of philosophical inquiries into consciousness and the mind. (shrink)

R.J. Barnes (chapter 3) takes up the ways in which Sicilian comedy engaged current intellectual fashions, especially philosophy. Sicily was the home of rich and influential poetic and philosophical traditions that Epicharmus held up for comic examination and ridicule.

A longish (12 page) discussion of Richard Sorabji's excellent book, with a further discussion of what it means for a theory of emotions to be a cognitive theory.

The thesis of this article is that there has never been any ground for the controversy between the doctrine of free will and determinism, that it is based upon a misapprehension, that the two assertions are entirely consistent, that one of them strictly implies the other, that they have been opposed only because of our natural want of the analytical imagination. In so saying I do not tamper with the meaning of either phrase. That would be unpardonable. I mean free (...) will in the natural and usual sense, in the fullest, the most absolute sense in which for the purposes of the personal and moral life the term is ever employed. I mean it as implying responsibility, merit and demerit, guilt and desert. I mean it as implying, after an act has been performed, that one " could have done otherwise " than one did. I mean it as conveying these things also, not in any subtly modified sense but in exactly the sense in which we conceive them in life and in law and in ethics. These two doctrines have been opposed because we have not realised that free will can be analysed without being destroyed, and that determinism is merely a feature of the analysis of it. And if we are tempted to take refuge in the thought of an "ultimate ", an "innermost" liberty that eludes the analysis, then we have implied a deterministic basis and constitution for this liberty as well. For such a basis and constitution lie in the idea of liberty. -/- The thesis is not, like that of Green or Bradley, that the contending opinions are reconciled if we adopt a certain metaphysic of the ego, as that it is timeless, and identifies itself with a desire by a " timeless act". This is to say that the two are irreconcilable, as they are popularly supposed to be, except by a theory that delivers us from the conflict by taking us out of time. Our view on the contrary is that from the natural and temporal point of view itself there never was any need of a reconciliation but only of a comprehension of the meaning of terms. (The metaphysical nature of the self and its identity through time is a problem for all who confront memory, anticipation, etc.; it has no peculiar difficulties arising from the present problem.) -/- I am not maintaining that determinism is true; only that it is true insofar as we have free will. That we are free in willing is, broadly speaking, a fact of experience. That broad fact is more assured than any philosophical analysis. It is therefore surer than the deterministic analysis of it, entirely adequate as that in the end appears to be. But it is not here affirmed that there are no small exceptions, no slight undetermined swervings, no ingredient of absolute chance. All that is here said is that such absence of determination, if and so far as it exists, is no gain to freedom, but sheer loss of it; no advantage to the moral life, but blank subtraction from it. -- When I speak below of "the indeterminist" I mean the libertarian indeterminist, that is, him who believes in free will and holds that it involves indetermination. (shrink)

This reply to an ongoing debate between conspiracy theory researchers from different disciplines exposes the conceptual confusions that underlie some of the disagreements in conspiracy theory research. Reconciling these conceptual confusions is important because conspiracy theories are a multidisciplinary topic and a profound understanding of them requires integrative insights from different fields. Specifically, we distinguish research focussing on conspiracy *theories* (and theorizing) from research of conspiracy *belief* (and mindset, theorists) and explain how particularism with regards to conspiracy theories does not (...) mean we cannot define a problematic subclass of conspiracy beliefs, while avoiding the problems of generalism. We hope this reply helps conspiracy theory researchers recognize the differences between studying conspiracy theories and conspiracy beliefs and appreciate the possibilities for fruitful, integrative, and interdisciplinary research. (shrink)

We present a framework that we are currently developing, that allows one to extract knowledge from the knowledge discovery in database (KDD) dataset. Data mining is a very active and space growing research area. Knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) is very useful in scientific domains. In simple terms, association rule mining is one of the most well-known methods for such knowledge discovery. Initially, database are divided into training and testing for the aid of fuzzy generating the rules using fuzzy rules (...) generation the set of rules are generated from the given dataset. From the generated rules, we are extracting the significant rules by using the improved artificial bee colony algorithm and cuckoo search algorithm (IABCCS). After extracting optimal knowledge from the dataset via rules, the data will be classified using fuzzy classifier with the aid of this finally we will classify the attack and normal. (shrink)

This essay challenges the notion of avoiding uncomfortable thoughts and emotions in mental health. It argues that accepting these experiences, as supported by therapies like Exposure and Response Prevention for Pure OCD, promotes greater wellbeing. By cultivating a compassionate relationship with inner experiences, individuals can foster resilience amidst challenges.

The coronavirus disease has spread throughout the world and its fear has made people to be more cautious in public places. Since precautionary measures are the only reliable protocol to defend ourselves, social distancing is the only best approach to defend against the pandemic situation. The reproduction number i.e. R0 factor of COVID-19, can be slowed down only through the physical distancing norms. This research proposes a deep learning approach for maintaining the social distance by tracking and detecting the people (...) present indoor and outdoor scenarios. Surveillance video is taken as the input and applied into you only look once (YOLO) V3 algorithm. The persons in the video are identified based on the segmentation algorithm present within the framework and then using Euclidean distance the image is evaluated. The bounding box algorithm helps to segregate the humans based on the minimum distance threshold. The proposed method is evaluated for images with peoples in the market, availing essential commodities and students entry inside a campus. Our proposed region-based convolutional neural network (RCNN) algorithm gives a better accuracy over the traditional models and hence the service can be implemented in general for places where social distancing is mandatory. (shrink)

This research paper aims at comparing Advaita Vedānta and Descartes philosophy on what is mind and consciousness. Although, the two traditions are resourceful, literature in this area has numerous research deficits in terms of comparative analysis and assimilation. The paper points out these lacunae, including the absence of multi-disciplinary exchange, a poor appreciation of how non-dualism might be actively meaningful in contemporary society, and how the nature of consciousness is principally qualitative. The concepts like consciousness, perception and Non-Duality are explained (...) in relation to the relevant philosophical systems with the help of Descartes and Śankara in particular. The concept of mind and consciousness has also been discussed from the perspective of Buddhist Philosophy in the paper. In establishing the aim of this paper, the following research gaps have been identified: The lack of interdisciplinary collaboration and the integration of empirical knowledge with reflexivity, and the analysis of modern ethical questions using a philosophical approach. In an attempt to better understand consciousness in general and through combining insights of the two traditions, our hope is to gain a wider perspective on how this concept could affect different modern discussions. (shrink)

Practical reason is the general human capacity for resolving, through reflection, the question of what one is to do. Deliberation of this kind is practical in at least two senses. First, it is practical in its subject matter, insofar as it is concerned with action. But it is also practical in its consequences or its issue, insofar as reflection about action itself directly moves people to act. Our capacity for deliberative self-determination raises two sets of philosophical problems. For one thing, (...) there are questions about how deliberation can succeed in being practical in its issue. What do we need to assume—both about agents and about the processes of reasoning they engage in—to make sense of the fact that deliberative reflection can directly give rise to action? Can we do justice to this dimension of practical reason while preserving the idea that practical deliberation is genuinely a form of reasoning? For another, there are large issues concerning the content of the standards that are brought to bear in practical reasoning. Which norms for the assessment of action are binding on us as deliberating agents? Do these norms provide resources for critical reflection about our ends, or are they exclusively instrumental? Under what conditions do moral norms yield valid standards for reasoning about action? The first set of issues is addressed in sections §§1–3 of the present article, while sections §§4–6 cover the second set of issues. (shrink)

l. There is an antinomy in Hare's thought between Ought-Implies-Can and No-Indicatives-from-Imperatives. It cannot be resolved by drawing a distinction between implication and entailment. 2. Luther resolved this antinomy in the l6th century, but to understand his solution, we need to understand his problem. He thought the necessity of Divine foreknowledge removed contingency from human acts, thus making it impossible for sinners to do otherwise than sin. 3. Erasmus objected (on behalf of Free Will) that this violates Ought-Implies-Can which he (...) supported with Hare-style ordinary language arguments. 4. Luther a) pointed out the antinomy and b) resolved it by undermining the prescriptivist arguments for Ought-Implies-Can. 5. We can reinforce Luther's argument with an example due to David Lewis. 6. Whatever its merits as a moral principle, Ought-Implies-Can is not a logical truth and should not be included in deontic logics. Most deontic logics, and maybe the discipline itself, should therefore be abandoned. 7. Could it be that Ought-Conversationally-Implies-Can? Yes - in some contexts. But a) even if these contexts are central to the evolution of Ought, the implication is not built into the semantics of the word; b) nor is the parallel implication built into the semantics of orders; and c) in some cases Ought conversationally implies Can, only because Ought-Implies-Can is a background moral belief. d) Points a) and b) suggest a criticism of prescriptivism - that Oughts do not entail imperatives but that the relation is one of conversational implicature. 8. If Ought-Implies-Can is treated as a moral principle, Erasmus' argument for Free Will can be revived (given his Christian assumptions). But it does not 'prove' Pelagianism as Luther supposed. A semi-Pelagian alternative is available. (shrink)

In the digital age, the concept of identity has evolved in ways that challenge long-held philosophical assumptions about the self. No longer has fixed or continuous, identity become fragmented, shaped by multiple digital personas that people craft in response to the ever-expanding digital universe. Now, there is no sense of a fixed self that remains constant throughout space and time. Self and identity can be seen as a Heraclitean flux always in a state of becoming and never for a moment (...) being in a state of being. The boundaries between the real and the virtual have blurred, and hyperreal experiences now often seem more significant than actual events. This review delves into the complex relationship between selfhood and digital representation, exploring how traditional theories like Baudrillard’s hyperreality and Buddhist notions of impermanence help explain this transformation. It examines the implications of digital simulations, especially in the context of digital immortality, which raises profound questions about consciousness, existence, and the essence of being. In a world where avatars, social media profiles, and virtual realities dominate, self navigates an uncertain terrain between reality and simulation. This study is an exploration of the evolving nature of identity, consciousness, and human experience in the age of digital fragmentation, with a focus on the philosophical and psychological dimensions of selfhood in the modern, digitized world. (shrink)

The combination of spirituality, meditation, and artificial intelligence (AI) has promising potential to expand people’s well-being using technology-based meditation. Proper meditation originates from Zen Buddhism and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras and focuses on inner peace and intensified consciousness which elective personal disposition. AI, in turn, brings master means of delivering those practices in the form of self-improving systems that customize and make access to them easier. However, such an integration brings major philosophical and ethical issues into question, including the genuineness of (...) experiences that are facilitated by artificial intelligence, data sharing, concerns over over-dependence on the technology that may in turn cause reduced personal responsibility and hard work. This paper aims at analysing the critical integration of AI-driven meditation following the spiritual interpretations of traditional meditation without compromising the tenets of meditation. It presents an interdisciplinary approach based on recent findings from the field of cognitive science, moral AI, and Eastern wisdom traditions to approach these problems. Therefore, by identifying the research lacunae, it provides a groundwork for voting ethically in the integration of AI in mindfulness practice and avoiding constraining human-oriented values resulting in improved existential spiritual change. (shrink)

This article focuses on the interaction between man and machine, AI specifically, to analyse how these systems are slowly taking over roles that hitherto were thought ‘only’ for humans. More recent, as AI has stepped up in ability to learn without supervision, to recognize patterns, and to solve problems, it adopted characteristics like creativity, novelty, intentionality. These events take one to the heart of what it is to be human, and the emerging definitions of self that are increasingly central to (...) post humanist discourses. The discussion in these two threads is in philosophy of AI and is concerned with issues of consciousness, intentionality and creativity. Al as a result of causing a shift in the current anthropocentric perceptions resulted in portrayal of humans as special beings. Secondly, this exploration responds to important questions related to AI application, such as ethical, social, and existential ones. The article emphasizes a necessity to define the role of the advent of AI and its influence on the interaction between people and technology as well as the role of the social individuality in the wake of intelligent machines that mimic thinking and creativity. It seeks to prompt more specific analysis of how or why AI reduces the differences between artificial and human intelligence or increases the prospects for options expanding the notion of consciousness beyond the human-centric one. (shrink)

Cloud Computing provides vast storage facility. The requirement of this system is to improve the security and transmission performance in the cloud storage environment. Methods: This system provides two level of security for the cloud data. The Client Data Security Contrivance (CDSC) and Cloud Service Provider (CSP) Data Security Contrivance are the two methods which transforms the original data to cipher text. The security algorithm used in CDSC is Linguistic Steganography. Blowfish algorithm is used in CSP Data Security Contrivance to (...) convert the cipher text using a secret-key block cipher of 64-bits. This system is designed to increase security and to improve the transmission performance. Storage-cheating attack model and Privacy-cheating attack model are implemented to protect the data on cloud. Findings: This system increases security and improves transmission performance. The blowfish algorithm is secure against unauthorized attacks and runs faster than the popular existing algorithms. Storage-cheating attack model and Privacy-cheating attack model provides the data confidentiality for data stored in the cloud in higher way. Improvements: The system can be implemented in real cloud system in the future. (shrink)

Stock market prediction is essential and of great interest because success- ful prediction of stock prices may promise smart bene ts. These tasks are highly complicated and very dicult. Many researchers have made valiant attempts in data mining to devise an ecient system for stock market movement analysis. In this paper, we have developed an ecient approach to stock market prediction by employing fuzzy C-means clustering and arti cial neural network. This research has been encouraged by the need of predicting (...) the stock market to facilitate the investors about buy and hold strategy and to make pro t. Firstly, the original stock market data are converted into interpreted historical ( nancial) data i.e. via technical indi-cators. Based on these technical indicators, datasets that are required for analysis are created. Subsequently, fuzzy-clustering technique is used to generate di erent training subsets. Subsequently, based on di erent training subsets, di erent ANN models are trained to formulate di erent base models. Finally, a meta-learner, fuzzy system module, is employed to predict the stock price. The results for the stock market prediction are validated through evaluation metrics, namely mean absolute deviation, mean square error, root mean square error, mean absolute percentage error used to estimate the forecasting accuracy in the stock market. Comparative analysis is carried out for single Neural Network (NN) and existing technique neu- ral. The obtained results show that the proposed approach produces better results than the other techniques in terms of accuracy. (shrink)

In his Encomium of Helen and On Not Being, Gorgias of Leontinoi discusses the nature and function of speech more extensively than any other surviving author before Plato. His discussions are not only surprising in the way they characterize the power of logos and its effects on a listener but also in how the two descriptions of speech seem to contradict one another. In the Helen, Gorgias claims that logos is a very powerful entity, capable of affecting a listener in (...) whatever way it wants. In On Not-Being, he makes the very different (but no less exaggerated) claim that logos is a non-entity, incapable of referring to anything other than itself. In this essay I show how these apparently contradictory accounts might be brought into harmony with one another.2 In the first part I address some of the interpretive difficulties with the text of Gorgias’s On Not Being (henceforth ONB) and the role that irony plays in the work. In particular I argue (as others have before) that Gorgias’s remarks about the impotency of speech are not meant to be taken seriously. Instead, they are aimed more squarely at raising questions about how exactly speech is thought to function and, more specifically, how linguistic reference works—i.e., how words somehow correspond to things, on one level, and to our ideas about things, on another. In the second and third parts of this paper, I illustrate how Gorgias’s concern with linguistic reference in ONB goes on to inform his notion of logos in the Encomium of Helen. I point specifically to evidence found in an important and often overlooked exit clause at the close of ONB regarding the difference between words and things. There, Gorgias insists that if words manifest meaning at all, they must appeal to their own sort of sense organ. In the Helen, he draws on the concepts of soul (psychē) and opinion (doxa) in order to construct this alternative, psychagogic account in which utterances are actually apprehended in ways akin to sense perception. Whether or not one is convinced by Gorgias’s alternative account of how speech works, the description he gives of logos does notionally circumvent the problem of linguistic reference and, in doing so, pushes one to think beyond the potentially constrictive framework of nomen et nominatum. I argue that, when read in this way, these two early discussions of logos represent a unified progression of serious thought about how speech works. (shrink)

In the present essay, imagination and its effects on the foundations of human life and thought, particularly those pertaining to desire and motivation, are investigated. It is then argued that the human as we know it cannot exist without imagination, and as such, it is an integral part of the self.