It's a small world after all...

In order to truly understand the core of Indian thought, it is important to understand the ontological difference between "Nothing" and "No-thing".  The idea of a "no-thing" is unique to Indian worldview, and to the best of my knowledge, is found nowhere else in philosophies across the world.  The "no-thing" refers to the core of our subjective experience, or pure awareness, or consciousness. To understand this better, we need to start with the notion of inquiry-- where, a subject or the inquirer is inquiring about an object , or the inquired .  All entities that can be objects of inquiry, are " things " and the absence of a thing becomes " nothing ". Conventional science today, regards everything as objects, and considers a subject or inquirer, to be just an object when viewed from the vantage point of some other subject.  However, Indian thought argues that what we see about other inquirers are just some objective shell in...

The way we approach our inquiry into the universe is called hermeneutics . Hermeneutics refers to the way of thinking, and the underlying approach we use to make sense of what we experience.  Our hermeneutics is so deeply ingrained within us that we are often unaware of its existence and the way it biases our thinking. As the saying by the physicist Werner Heisenberg goes:  What we observe is not the universe itself-- but the universe that is exposed to our method of inquiry   We get answers based on the kinds of questions we ask-- and while we are so obsessed with the answers, we often forget to inquire into our method of questioning itself.  Let me illustrate with an example. This video called "A tale of two brains" by Mark Gungor is quite popular on the Internet:  According to this theory, men's brain are characteristically different from women's brain. Men's brain categorises the universe into neat little boxes , and thinks only within that box. It puts back...

Judea Pearl, one of the prominent researchers in the logic of causality, argues that current-day mathematics and logic does not have mechanisms to represent causality. And this has caused great confusions in several instances.  Let us consider how causality is represented in current day mathematics and logic.  One of the most common situations where we interpret causality, is in a mathematical equation. An equation of the form  y = f(x) is often interpreted as the value of f(x) causes y to get a given value. This is the interpretation used in several programming languages for example. In a language like C or python, when we say:  a = b it means that the value of b causes the variable a to attain a given value. It is not the value of a that changes b, but the value of b that changes a.  But mathematically, the sign "=" simply means equality. In mathematics, a = b is the same as saying b = a.  This overloading of the "=" symbol causes complications in progra...

Almost everyday as I drive to work, I witness this episode. In one of the traffic signals on the way to work, there would inevitably be this one guy, dressed as Hanuman, and begging for alms from the vehicles that have stopped at the signal.  I have witnessed this for the past several years, and it is quite clear that the aim of his activity is to get some money for himself or the racket that he is part of (unless of course, he is some kind of an undercover agent pretending to be a beggar).  But why is he dressed like Hanuman? Why is he not begging as himself?  Actually, such a practice (of asking for alms being dressed as a deity) has a long history. In earlier times, people used to sometimes undertake long, arduous journeys to pilgrimage centres that would have taken several months or years to complete. Such arduous journeys would be made once in a lifetime, and some of them of course, would never return. And not everyone had the means to fund such a long journey. In or...

When we study logic, we first study the definition of a proposition or assertion : A statement that can be assigned a true or false value. For instance, a statement like "It is raining" is an assertion-- it could be either true that it is indeed raining, or false. But a sentence like, "Come here" is an imperative statement that is calling for an action, and not an assertion-- there is no truth or false value we can assign to it.  Assertions can be strung together using several logical operators like "and", "or", "not", "if-then" and so on. Hence for instance if we have two assertions: "It is raining" and "Our basement is flooded", then a statement of the form: "If it is raining then our basement is flooded" is also an assertion. Verifying the truth or falsity of this assertion often proceeds by an attempt at falsification. For instance, if we observe that it is indeed raining, and our basement is...

When studying Indian philosophy and culture, we come across two terms: Shruti and Smriti .  Of course, most people who have studied about India in Western academia would have heard of Manu Smriti (although very few Indians themselves have heard of it-- I myself heard of Manu Smriti when I was living in Europe, and till date, haven't come across its original text). Manu Smriti is supposed to be a compilation of all forms of regressive thoughts and practices that are associated with Hinduism today, and it is often argued that even today Hindus are inexorably bound by the decrees and commandments of Manu Smriti .  But what exactly are these Smritis ? The term Shruti means something that is heard or revealed. This is often construed to mean that the Shrutis represent knowledge that were orally passed from generation to generation, while Smritis were knowledge that were codified and recorded. This is not an accurate interpretation, as there are several Shrutis that are writ...

Deprivation is considered to be one of the primary factors leading to social strife and human suffering. The United Nations (UN) defines deprivation as the inability of a social group to effectively participate in the larger society and sustain their livelihoods. One of the primary sources of deprivation is poverty, where extreme poverty is defined as living below US$1.25 a day .  Several initiatives under goal 1 of the UN SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) are underway across the world, to identify deprived sections of the society and to bring them into the mainstream.  In this post, I would like to argue that, deprivation is a result of two kinds of factors, and it is important to distinguish between the two.  The first form of deprivation occurs due to lack of equity within a given paradigmatic framework. Such forms of deprivation is well addressed and well understood. For a variety of reasons, several social groups get excluded from relevant opportunities that can en...

Indian civilisation is characterised by what might be called "the great debate" that continues to this day. This debate is very relevant to cutting edge science and philosophy today-- but much of science at least, is not looking in this direction.  This post is a small attempt to introduce this great debate-- from my perspective.  *~*~*~*~*~*~ Among the top-most scientists and philosophers today, a burning question that is hotly debated is about consciousness. How does consciousness and its complex constructs like identity, desire, morality, etc. develop from material reactions in the brain?  This question gains even more significance today, with rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) taking over several aspects of our lives. If a human were to act recklessly or irresponsibly, we have several mechanisms to deal with it. We could appeal to their sense of empathy, humanity or conscience to reflect upon their actions; we could "shame" them into regretting their...

Today was one of those rare occasions where I felt completely relieved of all forms of existential crisis for some time, and knew that I was exactly where I should be. As an academic, it is my good fortune to meet some very bright minds-- some of whom have come together to start a Philosophy Club.  Today's discussion was on the issue of identity .  I have talked extensively about our cognitive faculty of identity in earlier posts. We all possess an "elastic" sense of self, where we often identify with some elements of our external world, and act in its interest. For instance, we often identify with our family, our religion, culture, country, profession, gender, etc.  Identity associations are fundamentally different from rational associations. In the latter, we associate with something because we expect to derive a value from that association. Identity associations are different. When we identify with something-- we act as if that something is part of us. We actively wor...

Engineering today, is dominated by what may be called "creation science." Much of what we study in engineering is in the form of creating something-- be it a machine, software, structure, etc. Most of our effort goes into designing our creation and implement it in a way that makes it effective.  But every engineering deployment is actually an intervention into an existing live system. Be it creating a building, a bridge, a car, a software, a gadget, or whatever, we are not only creating something, but this creation is intervening into an existing system and affecting the way it functions.  Of course, by creating something, we wish to affect the way something functions. Like for example, by creating an automobile, we are affecting the way people commute. But for every creation, there is an intended affect, and many forms of unintended or collateral affects.  In many cases, our created solutions can be so good that it can become a victim of its own success. For instance, s...