Ramesh Pradhan

This paper is about making the ethical discourse relevant to the students of technology in the present age of information. Information ethics is already a part of the present day engagement with information technology at all levels. This encourages us to carry forward the ethical discourse further by bringing in the moral thoughts of Wiener and Gandhi. Both Wiener and Gandhi lived in the age of technology, but both rebelled against it for basically moral reasons. Wiener is the founder of cybernetics and communication science, while Gandhi is a humanist and moralist and a crusader for freedom of humanity. Both agreed, however, that human freedom needs check on the inhuman use of technology. That is, both shared the philosophy of human dignity and value which demand a "human use" of technology. In this paper we explore the possibility of a humanistic ethics for information technology on the basis of moral thoughts of Wiener and Gandhi and wish to present the vision of the human civilization which underlies their thoughts.

Description: The book presents a systematic view of the landmark developments in analytic philosophy in the twentieth century. It highlights the development of the concepts such as language, meaning, truth, reference, necessity, analyticity, etc. which have been central to analytic philosophy. The book consists of four parts, namely: Part I The Linguistic Revolution; Part II The Logic of Language; Part III The Primacy of the Semantical and Part IV Language, Mind and Metaphysics. Part I discusses the nature of the linguistic revolution and the analytic method. Part II presents a panoramic view of the fall of formal language philosophy and the rise of the ordinary language philosophy in the west. Part III brings out the semantic issues like the problems of truth, meaning, reference, etc. Part IV attempts to discuss the nature of language-reality relationship, the nature of mental representations and the concept of mind and also the metaphysical issues of realism and anti-realism. Finally, it brings out the metaphysics of freedom, value and reason. The author has attempted to bring out the issues of analytic philosophy in a systematic and coherent fashion. Analytic philosophy, in spite of the appearances to the contrary, is a systematic philosophy with a built-in metaphysics of man and the universe. The book will be of interest to the general students of philosophy as well as the specialists in philosophy working in the areas of philosophy of language and meaning.

The present book intends to approach the problem of mind, meaning and consciousness from a non-naturalist or transcendental point of view. The naturalization of consciousness has reached a dead-end. There can be no proper solution to the problem of mind within the naturalist framework. This work intends to reverse this trend and bring back the long neglected transcendental theory laid down by Kant and Husserl in the West and Vedanta and Buddhism in India. The novelty of this approach lies in how we can make an autonomous space for mind and meaning without denying its connection with the world. The transcendental theory does not disown the embodied nature of consciousness, but goes beyond the body in search of higher meanings and values. The scope of this work extends from mind and consciousness to the world and brings the world into the space of mind and meaning with a hope to enchant the world. The world needs to be retrieved from the stranglehold of scientism and naturalism. This book will dispel the illusion about naturalism which has gripped the minds of our generation. The researchers interested in the philosophy of mind and consciousness can benefit from this work.

In this paper an attempt has been made to understand the nature of spirituality and spiritual consciousness in the philosophy of Professor R. Balasubramanian, an eminent Advaitic thinker of our times. He not only expounded the intricate philosophy of Advaita but also developed his own spiritual philosophy that encompasses a complete view of man and the world. Professor Balasubramanian derives his philosophical insights from Vedanta in general and Advaita Vedanta in particular. Besides, he is influenced by the existentialist and humanist philosophy of the West to brings out the comprehensive view of the universalistic ethics and spirituality modelled on the philosophy of the universal Spirit.

This book deals with the philosophy of Daya Krishna, an Indian philosopher of the twentieth century. It discusses the central issues in Daya Krishna’s early philosophy as a synthesis of the Indian and Western philosophical methods. It presents problems of the past and the present in a holistic frame of creative philosophizing. It provides a glimpse into the issues human beings face in all vital areas of human civilization. It discusses the nature of philosophy and the philosophical method in Daya Krishna’s syncretic philosophy. Issues such as self and freedom and ethics and religion are explored in the chapters. It is of interest to those who are engaged with Indian philosophy and Indian philosophers of the twentieth century and especially to those whose interest lies in understanding the cultural East and its philosophical responses to the cultural West.

This paper seeks to move from soft naturalism to anti-naturalism with regard to the understanding of mind and the world. John McDowell has already laid down the groundwork of soft naturalism or limited naturalism in his framework of understanding of the relation between mind and the world. McDowell’s argument is based on his commitment to some form of naturalism as against what he calls “bald naturalism.” His form of naturalism is derived from his idea of “second nature,” which places the space of reasons within the realm of second nature as distinguished from the realm of first nature. The latter is the realm of law, while the former is the realm of reasons. Thus, McDowell reconciles rationalism or Platonism with naturalism by showing that reason must be placed within the realm of human nature, if not in the realm of the natural world. My argument is that even soft naturalism cannot be reconciled with rationalism because we have far more responsibility to place normativity and reasons away from nature, even if the latter is the human nature. Human nature is an extension of the natural world, and there must be a decisive break between the realm of reasons and the so-called second nature.