The secular character of the Nigerian state should not impede collaboration between the Roman Catholic Schools Management Board and the Government of Cross River State (Nigeria) in the area of religious education. Based on the above claim, this paper is an exercise in content analysis of The Catholic School{\\ial is, the document regulating Catholic principles of education in schools) and Religion and National Values: Primary 1- 5(text on curricular contents of religious education at the primary school level in (...) Nigeria) in view of highlighting its implications for religious education. This work is focused on bringing out some points of convergence and divergence, if any, in these two documents. Content analysis technique is the modus operandi used in this research paper. The research findings of this paper show that Catholic primary schools can adopt the curriculum for religious education but should be weary of some of its doctrinally watered-down contents. (shrink)

Avicenna has placed the discussion of bliss and happiness as the main axis of the eighth Namat of ishārāt wa-al-tanbīhāt, and he has dedicated the first two chapters of this Namat to the issue of the originality of pleasure and intellectual happiness and its strength compared to other pleasures. In the first chapter, Avicenna has addressed the anteriority of internal pleasure over external pleasure by expressing an "Wahm" and "Tanbih", and he has rejected the views of those who make pleasure (...) exclusive to external issues. On the other hand, he also mentioned the second chapter as a sequel to the first chapter and in that he refuted the promise of those who reckon that happiness is exclusive in sensual matters. In this way, Avicenna's purpose in these two chapters is to prove the pleasure and intellectual happiness and its superiority over other pleasures. As a matter of fact, Avicenna has made this discussion the basis for other discussions of this Namat, and this study will aim to analyze the content of these two chapters. (shrink)

Al-Fārābī's discussed fundamental issues in the first ten sections of Kītāb al-Mīllah briefly. Defining the nation (religion), describing the types of societies, dividing the nation (religion) into opinions and actions, and mentioning each of them, synonyms of the nation with other concepts such as religion and shārīʿa, the method of inferring the opinions of the nation, the similarity of the virtuous nation to philosophy, the relationship between the two components of the nation with theoretical philosophy and phronesis (practical philosophy), dealing (...) with fallacies using topic and rhetoric, the reasons for not expressing some laws by the first ruler, the conditions of the rulers after the first ruler, the wisdom, jurisprudence and virtue of the nation's ruler, and discussing the philosophical nature of jurisprudence, the most important contents of Al-Fārābī's in this ten section. On the other hand, it must be claimed that various theories can be extracted from Kītāb al-Mīllah: 1. Revelation as the highest faculty of reason; 2. The unity of theoretical philosophy and Phronesis- the unity of theoretical and practical reason; 3. Philosophy of jurisprudence; 4. Governance philosophy; 5. shārīʿa purposes; 6. Aristocracy; 7. Philosophical jurisprudence. In this paper, in addition to the translation of the first ten sections of Kītāb al-Mīllah, its content is also explained and these seven ideas are extracted from this treatise. (shrink)

Background Improving the competencies of nurses requires improving educational methods through the use of novel methods in teaching and learning. We aim to explore the perceptions of stakeholders (including nursing education directors, faculty members and nursing students) of the requirements of implementing innovative educational approaches in nursing. -/- Methods In this qualitative descriptive study, 19 participants, including educational directors, faculty members, and undergraduate and graduate nursing students, were selected through the purposeful sampling method. Achieving the theoretical saturation in extracted categories (...) was considered as a criterion for determining the sample size and the completion of sampling. The data were collected from December 2019 to May 2020 in nursing schools of Tehran, Iran, through in-depth semi-structured individual face-to-face interviews and were then analyzed based on the Graneheim and Lundman method. -/- Results Using qualitative content analysis, eight sub-themes and three themes were extracted. The extracted themes were ‘novel educational policymaking’, ‘Innovative education-oriented platform’, and ‘managing barriers of innovative educational approaches’. -/- Conclusions Developing and implementing innovative educational approaches entail providing appropriate context, structure, and required facilities by the policymaking system and educational authorities. In addition, developing capacity and related competencies of faculty members and students as the major stakeholders in employing these approaches is crucial. (shrink)

In addition to existing practices and norms within the institutions to which they belong, scientists form an epistemic community. The flow of information, the processes of belief formation, and the assumptions scientists are making determine the structure of an epistemic community. Members of such communities can be categorized as epistemic experts or epistemic agents. In exceptional circumstances, such as the crisis caused by the global coronavirus pandemic, the existing organization, conventions, and rules within the epistemic community are disrupted. In times (...) of crisis, epistemic agents’ trust in experts becomes as crucial as scientific knowledge. Trust epistemic agents have in experts may decrease in crisis situations and affect experts’ roles within the epistemic community. This puts epistemic experts in the position of needing to reestablish their trustworthiness through various rhetorical attempts. Here, we examine some of those attempts from the existing framework of rhetorical strategies used to reestablish or defend one’s own expert role, but on novel data. To that end, we use examples of epistemic experts’ justifications when confronted with public questioning about their behavior amidst the coronavirus crisis. We analyze experts’ rhetorical approaches via qualitative content analysis and replicate four rhetorical strategies experts use when defending their epistemic positions that are previously established in analyses of similar cases in other crisis situations. (shrink)

In today’s global higher education environment, international students represent not only an important source of external income for universities: the degree of cross-border student mobility also reflects the internationalization of higher education sector. Universities have engaged in efforts to sell themselves to prospective students and promotional videos are among the most widely used marketing tools for this purpose. This study reports the results of a study analyzing the content of 140 higher education promotional videos from 14 countries available on (...) YouTube. The results reveal that while the pattern of use of YouTube for two-waycommunication with viewers, information contents and appeal messages among sampled universities is fairly homogenous, some marked differences emerge when cultural background and global position ranking of the university are taken into account. The implications of these findings are that, although, transnational higher education has been profoundly globalized, culture still plays a significant role in marketing practice for the recruitment of mobile students. In addition, different universities have various student-targeted segments. These findings provide the basis of a series of recommendations for universities looking to optimize their use of YouTube and promotional video design to market to international students. (shrink)

This paper reports on the hospitality management competencies required to be assigned to a management position in Turkey. The study found out a number of competencies with top priority ranging from 82.1 to 21.4 percent extracted from job ads on the most browsed career websites in Turkey by employing a content analysis as the research method. These core competencies were delineated in the five domains of Sandwith’s Competency Domain Model in order to discover how they pertained to the (...) theory. The in-depth analysis rendered the whole range of domains particularly leadership, technical and interpersonal, partly conceptual/creative and administrative. The study concluded that recruiters mainly look for managers with leadership, technical and interpersonal competencies in Turkey. (shrink)

This second technical report shows some partial results for the variables of the proposed statistical analysis and a discussion about some changes in sampling. In what concerns the qualitative analysis of content, the report presents the general predominant tendencies that get contoured with the first two samples.

The current study evaluates qualitatively how the mathematical dimension of gambling is reflected in the content of gambling websites. A number of gambling websites have been reviewed for their content in that respect. A statistical analysis recorded the presence of the mathematical dimension of gambling and its forms in the content of the participating websites, and a qualitative research study analyzed and assessed the quality of the content with respect to that dimension. The technical reports (...) associated with this study describe the methods used in the processes of review and content analysis, details of the processes, and the specific challenges and difficulties that they posed. (shrink)

The notion of representation in neuroscience has largely been predicated on localizing the components of computational processes that explain cognitive function. On this view, which I call “algorithmic homuncularism,” individual, spatially and temporally distinct parts of the brain serve as vehicles for distinct contents, and the causal relationships between them implement the transformations specified by an algorithm. This view has a widespread influence in philosophy and cognitive neuroscience, and has recently been ably articulated and defended by Shea. Still, I am (...) skeptical about algorithmic homuncularism, and I argue against it by focusing on recent methods for complex data analysis in systems neuroscience. I claim that analyses such as principle components analysis and linear discriminant analysis prevent individuating vehicles as algorithmic homuncularism recommends. Rather, each individual part contributes to a global state space, trajectories of which vary with important task parameters. I argue that, while homuncularism is false, this view still supports a kind of “vehicle realism,” and I apply this view to debates about the explanatory role of representation. (shrink)

This paper presents information about the moisture content and temperature level of brick walls in Tirana, Albania. The buildings whose walls have been studied were built in two different eras, throughout the twentieth century, and in more recent times. Given that during the second half of the twentieth century, Albania has been isolated from most of Europe and the West, and consequently the new architectural ideologies of the time, have not had the proper implementation there, the paper focuses on (...) the characteristic types of bricks used in Albania, the functions for which they are used, and their effectiveness in achieving comfort (thermal, moisture content control) during the two time periods mentioned above. Depending on the functions bricks perform in the walls studied in this paper, the walls are separated into two main groups: Walls in which bricks have structural role (red silicate brick walls, white silicate brick walls) and walls in which bricks do not have structural role (concrete block walls, holed brick walls). For all the types of bricks mentioned above, indoor moisture content and temperature measurements have been performed in all four cardinal directions. For the walls in which the bricks have a structural function, moisture measurements have been performed in all the facades of the buildings, because moisture in the bricks of these types of buildings, being a very important factor, directly affects the structural performance of the elements. The aim of the paper is to show the differences in moisture and temperature levels of the walls of these buildings, depending on the engineering and architectural techniques used during the building process, the use of insulation, and the masonry composition. (shrink)

This article presents a semantic analysis of indirect speech reports. The analysis aims to explain a combination of two phenomena. First, there are true utterances of sentences of the form α said that φ which are used to report an utterance u of a sentence wherein φ's content is not u's content. This implies that in uttering a single sentence, one can say several things. Second, when the complements of these reports (and indeed, these reports themselves) (...) are placed in conjunctions, the conjunctions are typically infelicitous. I argue that this combination of phenomena can be explained if speech reports report (perhaps contingent) parts of the contents of the sentences reported. (shrink)

We often hear how scientists have discovered that a certain human trait – or a trait of another type of organism – is innate, genetic, heritable, inherited, naturally selected etc. All these claims have something in common: they all declare a trait to have significant organism internal (for instance genetic) causes that are present in the organism at its birth. I call claims like these “nativist claims”. Nativist claims are important. They shape our overall understanding of what we are, what (...) we can do and what is good for us. They also impact our practical decision making. For instance, we know that certain types of genes increase the risk of certain diseases, and increasingly this has an effect on healthcare practices. Many people believe that in the matter of children’s education we should consider the fact that many cognitive abilities are highly heritable. Associations between genetics and aggressive behavior have been taken to be alleviating circumstances in criminal sentencing. It is therefore important to correctly understand the content and implications of nativist claims. In this doctoral thesis I analyze, by philosophical means, the content of different kinds of nativist claim. What does it mean that some psychological tendency is innate? What does it mean that intelligence is 50% heritable? How (if at all) do genes come to carry information about the traits of an organism – they are nothing like the information carriers familiar to us, such as newspapers, e-mails, secret codes, and audio files. This thesis emphasizes two things. Firstly, I demonstrate, that in different scientific contexts these words ('innate', 'genetically caused' etc.) can mean very different things. Therefore, the implications of a given nativist claim in one scientific context can be remarkably different from another nativist claim’s implications in some other scientific context. Secondly, I explain how the development of innate, heritable and genetically caused traits can be determined in different and often unexpected ways by our environment and experiences. I demonstrate that the content of a concept that is considered innate by cognitive scientists can be determined by what the organism that possesses the concept has experienced. I also show that even a trait which is 100% heritable can at the same time be a socially constructed trait. (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant develops a metametaphysical view concerning the domain and source of a distinctively metaphysical cognition of objects of experience, which is given in terms of an analysis of our representational capacity for thought, namely, the understanding, regarding its sub-capacities and their constitutive abilities and acts. In the Analytic of Concepts, more precisely, in the Metaphysical and Subjective Deductions of the Categories, Kant develops an elaborate account of the content and formation of those (...) metaphysical concepts of an object in general through which there is genuine philosophical cognition of objects of experience, namely, the categories. Relating the Analytic of Concepts to the Doctrine of Method, I give a detailed reconstruction of this account in contrast to both empirical and mathematical concepts. I do so by establishing, for the first time (in English) that and how the representational contents of the categories, as general representations of objects, derive from fundamental abilities and acts of a synthesis of an empirical intuition that the understanding contributes to experiences of objects, which thus yield the original contents of the categories. In particular, I argue that the threefold synthesis of the fundamental act-types of the apprehension, reproduction, and recognition of a manifold of sense-impressions, presented in the A-Deduction, holds the key to understanding the origin of the categories, or concepts of an object in general, investigated in their Metaphysical Deduction. It turns out that the threefold synthesis, as it is exercised regarding a manifold of sense-impressions in an empirical intuition of an object, can indeed account for the representational contents of the categories of Quality (apprehension), Quantity (reproduction), Relation (recognition), and Modality (relating to the object through a manifold of sense-impressions). In this sense, the categories are “concepts of synthesis” (A80/B106) or “concepts of the synthesis of possible sensations” (A723/B751). (shrink)

Phishing attacks remain one of the most prevalent cybersecurity threats, affecting individuals and organizations globally. The rapid evolution of phishing techniques necessitates more sophisticated detection and classification methods. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to phishing content classification using a Genetic Ranking Optimization Algorithm (GROA), combined with dynamic weighting, to improve the accuracy and ranking of phishing versus legitimate content. Our method leverages features such as URL structure, email content analysis, and user behavior patterns (...) to enhance the detection system's decision-making process. (shrink)

This paper examines the contentious issues in the relationship between religion and culture. This relationship appears to have been cordial and crucial for the corporate existence and development of the society. Although religion and culture are closely knit, there are issues of contention between them. However, these are two concepts or phenomena that exist together for the good of the society. In discovering the issues, the researcher adopts the literary method of study and examines the subject from that perspective. This (...) paper revealed that there is culture in religion as there is religion in culture. These two elements of society (religion and culture) play different roles to keep the society functional. Notably too, religion give meaning to culture. However, our findings suggest the checking of the excesses of culture over religion to help develop a peaceful and socially conducive atmosphere for the people. This paper further recommends that religion should be given opportunity to shape and reform culture for the benefit of man. (shrink)

In response to Zack’s “White Privilege​ and Black Rights”, I consider her account of the hunting schema in light of police violence against black women. I argue that although Zack provides us with a compelling account of racial profiling and police brutality, the emotional aspect she attributes to the hunting schema is too charitable. I then claim that Zack’s hunting schema fails to account for state violence against black women and in doing so she only tells a partial story of (...) comparative injustice as it relates to police brutality of blacks. (shrink)

The conventional implicature, arguably, refers to plenty of linguistic aspects with respect to episteme, metaphysics, as well as semantic criticism of language. Accordingly, the conventional implication consists of a sort of specific literal meanings, which slightly differ from the conversational implication. In addition to that, the particular taxonomy of slur words intends to utter a variety of dyslogistic, disparaging expressions in terms of bad or awful contents along with immoral conducts of a word. Hence, it is, apparently, debatable and doubtful (...) that to what extent slur words can convey unethical substance in a way of the conventional implicature? This contrastive article, therefore, attempts to examine credible reasons for clarifying the thesis: the awful essence of pejorative words comes with a conventional implicature. Correspondingly, I have emphasised a few substantial findings such as combinatorial externalism, prohibitionism alongside expressivism. However, notwithstanding this semantic analysis, it is restricted to investigate epistemic and metaphysical affiliations in this regard. (shrink)

All contributions included in the present issue were originally presented at an ‘Author Meets Critics’ session organised by Richard Zach at the Pacific Meeting of the American Philosophical Association in San Diego in the Spring of 2014.

The current report presents results of the qualitative analysis of the usage of the key math terms in the content of the reviewed websites in the current sample, with emphasis on the necessary distinctions for the word and concept of ‘odds’. Patterns, motivations, conceptual and contextual aspects of the usage are discussed. The theoretical norms of adequacy of this usage in the context of gambling are briefly presented. -/- Technical report of the research project 'Reflection of the mathematical (...) dimension of gambling in iGaming online content - A qualitative analysis'. (shrink)

With the previous technical reports, we presented the main insights from the qualitative analysis of the reflection of the mathematical dimension of gambling in gambling-related sites, in its structural, linguistic, epistemic, and informative aspects. In this report we will focus on the factors responsible for the patterns that the content of the gambling-related sites exhibit and the way that the mathematical dimension of gambling is reflected in this content, namely the factors that influence the content policies (...) of these sites. The report will also point to further directions of research-for both this project and for other investigators-for finding the appropriate balance and relation between the commercial policies on the one hand, and the adequacy and ethics of the content on the other hand. (shrink)

The current technical report of the research project investigating how the mathematical dimension of gambling is reflected in the communication and texts associated with the gambling industry raises the problem of the adequacy of sampling and proposes a new approach in this respect. The qualitative analysis of the reviewed websites is extended to a deeper analysis of language and also to the organization and structure of websites’ content. Although not stated as a goal of the initial project, (...) the research will also try to identify relationships between the specificity of content relative to the mathematical dimension of gambling, and the management and marketing of the website. An overview of the results of the statistical analysis of the current sample is also presented. (shrink)

This paper is envisaged to provide the Ukrainian businesses with suggestions for a content marketing model for the effective management of website content in order to ensure its leading position on the European and world markets. Our study employed qualitative data collection with semi-structured interviews, survey, observation methods, quantitative and qualitative methods of content analysis of regional B2B companies, as well as the comparative analysis. The following essential stages of the content marketing process as (...) preliminary search and analysis, website content creation, promotion and distribution, and content marketing progress assessment were identified and classified in detail. The strategic decisions and activities at each stage of the process showed how a company’s on-site and off-site content can be used as a tool to establish the relationship between the brand and its target audience and increase brand visibility online. This study offered several useful insights into how website content, social media and various optimization techniques work together in engaging with the target audience and driving website traffic and sales leads. We constructed and described the content marketing model elaborated for effective web content management that can be useful for those companies that start to consider employing content marketing strategy for achieving business goals and increasing a leadership position. (shrink)

This chapter begins with an empirical analysis of attitudes towards the law, which, in turn, inspires a philosophical re-examination of the moral status of the rule of law. In Section 2, we empirically analyse relevant survey data from the US. Although the survey, and the completion of our study, preceded the recent anti-police brutality protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd, the relevance of our observations extends to this recent development and its likely reverberations. Consistently with prior studies, (...) we find that people’s ascriptions of legitimacy to the legal system are predicted strongly by their perceptions of the procedural justice and lawfulness of police and court officials’ action. Two factors emerge as significant predictors of people’s compliance with the law: (i) their belief that they have a (content-independent, moral) duty to obey the law (which is one element of legitimacy, as defined here); and (ii) their moral assessment of the content of specific legal requirements (‘perceived moral content of laws’). We also observe an interactive relationship between these two factors. At higher levels of perceived moral content of laws, felt duty to obey is a better predictor of compliance. And, similarly, perceived moral content of laws is a better predictor of compliance at higher levels of felt duty to obey. This suggests that the moral content incorporated in specific laws interacts with the normative force people ascribe to legal authorities by virtue of other qualities, specifically here procedural justice and lawfulness. In Section 3, the focus shifts to a philosophical analysis, whereby we identify a parallel (similarly interactive) modality in the way that form and content mutually affect the value of the rule of law. We advocate a distinctive alternative to two rival approaches in jurisprudential discourse, the first of which claims that Lon Fuller’s eight precepts of legality embody moral qualities not contingent on the law’s content, while the second denies any independent moral value in these eight precepts, viewing them as entirely subservient to the law’s substantive goals. In contrast, on the view put forward here, Fuller’s principles possess (inter alia) an expressive moral quality, but their expressive effect does not materialise in isolation from other, contextual factors. In particular, the extent to which it materialises is partly sensitive to the moral quality of the law’s content. (shrink)

In light of the observations and research design presented in the previous reports, the current technical report is focused on the relationship between the quality and specificity of the content of the gambling sites and the site’s SEO and marketing policy. This relationship is dependent upon the category of the gambling site and the difference in content quality, and the degree to which the mathematical dimension of gambling is reflected in this content is explained by this dependence.

The Genetic Ranking Optimization Algorithm (GROA) is used to rank phishing content based on multiple features by optimizing the ranking system through iterative selection and weighting. Dynamic weighting further enhances the process by adjusting the weights of features based on their importance in real-time. This hybrid approach enables the model to learn from the data, improving classification over time. The classification system was evaluated using benchmark phishing datasets, and the results demonstrated a significant improvement in detection accuracy and reduced (...) false positives. (shrink)

This paper argues that to account for group speech acts, we should adopt a representationalist account of mode / force. Individual and collective subjects do not only represent what they e.g. assert or order. By asserting or ordering they also indicate their theoretical or practical positions towards what they assert or order. The ‘Frege point’ cannot establish the received dichotomy of force and propositional content. On the contrary, only the representationalist account allows a satisfactory response to it. It also (...) allows us to give a more satisfactory analysis of the speech act of inviting a joint commitment and to answer two important questions Bernhard Schmid has raised about group speech acts, namely whether there are 1st person plural forms of Moore’s paradox and of 1st person authority. (shrink)

The current technical report presents the partial results of the quantitative analysis of the research project, after the review of 247 gambling websites. It is focused on and discusses the usage of the math terms specific to gambling in the reviewed sample. In particular, the fifth technical report discusses the usage of math terms associated with the game of slots, as found in the reviewed sample.

What are contents? The answer provided by the possible worlds approach is that contents are sets of possible worlds. This approach incurs serious problems and to solve them Jago suggests, in The Impossible, to get rid of the ‘possible’ bit and allowing some impossible worlds to be part of the game. In this note, I briefly consider the metaphysics behind Jago’s account and then focus on whether Jago is right in thinking that his worlds and his worlds only can do (...) the explanatory work he posits them for. (shrink)

How can it be true that one sees a lake when looking at a picture of a lake, since one's gaze is directed upon a flat dry surface covered in paint? An adequate contemporary explanation cannot avoid taking a theoretical stand on some fundamental cognitive science issues concerning the nature of perception, of pictorial content, and of perceptual reference to items that, strictly speaking, have no physical existence. A solution is proposed that invokes a broadly functionalist, naturalistic theory of (...) perception, plus a double content analysis of perceptual interpretation, which permits non-supervenient, culturally autonomous modes of reference to be generated and artistically exploited even in a purely physical world. In addition, a functionalist concept of broad or 'spread' reference replaces the traditional precise intentional concept of reference, which previously made reference to non-existent items theoretically intractable. (shrink)

Has transhumanism influenced military thinking? Previous work found that transhumanist terms did not appear widely in military publications. The present work analyzes and improves on previous content analysis of transhumanist terms in military literature using the tools of library and information studies.

Interactions between an intelligent software agent and a human user are ubiquitous in everyday situations such as access to information, entertainment, and purchases. In such interactions, the ISA mediates the user’s access to the content, or controls some other aspect of the user experience, and is not designed to be neutral about outcomes of user choices. Like human users, ISAs are driven by goals, make autonomous decisions, and can learn from experience. Using ideas from bounded rationality, we frame these (...) interactions as instances of an ISA whose reward depends on actions performed by the user. Such agents benefit by steering the user’s behaviour towards outcomes that maximise the ISA’s utility, which may or may not be aligned with that of the user. Video games, news recommendation aggregation engines, and fitness trackers can all be instances of this general case. Our analysis facilitates distinguishing various subcases of interaction, as well as second-order effects that might include the possibility for adaptive interfaces to induce behavioural addiction, and/or change in user belief. We present these types of interaction within a conceptual framework, and review current examples of persuasive technologies and the issues that arise from their use. We argue that the nature of the feedback commonly used by learning agents to update their models and subsequent decisions could steer the behaviour of human users away from what benefits them, and in a direction that can undermine autonomy and cause further disparity between actions and goals as exemplified by addictive and compulsive behaviour. We discuss some of the ethical, social and legal implications of this technology and argue that it can sometimes exploit and reinforce weaknesses in human beings. (shrink)

The rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the developments of Large Language Models (LLMs) like Generative Pretrained Transformers (GPTs) have significantly influenced content creation in scholarly communication and across various fields. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the content reliability between human-generated and GPT-generated scholarly articles. Recent developments in AI suggest that GPTs have become capable in generating content that can mimic human language to a greater extent. This highlights and raises questions about the (...) quality, accuracy, and reliability of such content, especially in academic contexts. Statistical evaluations and quantitative assessments conducted in this study uncover key differences in content accuracy, coherence, citation usage, and overall reliability between human and GPT-generated articles. The paper also examines the potential biases, the role of context, and the implications of AI-generated content for the future of scholarly communication. The study concludes with framework for predictive model indicating the potential future impact of GPT-driven content creation and recommendations for ensuring content quality and ethical considerations in AI usage. (shrink)

This paper challenges the Kripkean interpretation of a posteriori necessities. It will be demonstrated, by an analysis of classic examples, that the modal content of supposed a posteriori necessities is more complicated than the Kripkean line suggests. We will see that further research is needed concerning the a priori principles underlying all a posteriori necessities. In the course of this analysis it will emerge that the modal content of a posteriori necessities can be best described in (...) terms of a Finean conception of modality – by giving essences priority over modality. The upshot of this is that we might be able to establish the necessity of certain supposed a posteriori necessities by a priori means. (shrink)

I argue that perceptual content is always affected by the allocation of one’s attention. Perception attributes determinable and determinate properties to the perceived scene. Attention makes (or tries to make) our perceptual attribution of properties more determinate. Hence, a change in our attention changes the determinacy of the properties attributed to the perceived scene.

This paper argues against both conceptual and linguistic analysis as sources of a priori knowledge. Whether such knowledge is possible turns on the nature of concepts. The paper's chief contention is that none of the main views about what concepts are can underwrite the possibility of such knowledge.

Introduction: There is currently no binding, internationally accepted and successful approach to ensure global equitable access to healthcare during a pandemic. The aim of this ethical analysis is to bring into the discussion a legally regulated vaccine allocation as a possible strategy for equitable global access to vaccines. We focus our analysis on COVAX (COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access) and an existing EU regulation that, after adjustment, could promote global vaccine allocation. -/- Methods: The main documents discussing the two (...) strategies are examined with a qualitative content analysis. The ethical values reasonableness, openness and transparency, inclusiveness, responsiveness and accountability serve as categories for our ethical analysis. -/- Results: We observed that the decision-making processes in a legal solution to expand access to vaccines would be more transparent than in COVAX initiative, would be more inclusive, especially of nation states, and the values responsiveness and accountability could be easily incorporated in the development of a new regulation. -/- Discussion: A legal strategy that offers incentives to the pharmaceutical industry in return for global distribution of vaccines according to the Fair Priority Model is an innovative way to achieve global and equitable access to vaccines. However, in the long term, achieving the Sustainable Development Goals will require from all nations to work in solidarity to find durable solutions for global vaccine research and development. Interim solutions, such as our proposed legal strategy for equitable access to vaccines, and efforts to find long-term solutions must be advanced in parallel. (shrink)

The Genetic Ranking Optimization Algorithm (GROA) is used to rank phishing content based on multiple features by optimizing the ranking system through iterative selection and weighting. Dynamic weighting further enhances the process by adjusting the weights of features based on their importance in real-time. This hybrid approach enables the model to learn from the data, improving classification over time.

Perception is riddled with cases of reliable misperception. These are cases in which a perceptual state is tokened inaccurately any time it is tokened under normal conditions. On the face of it, this fact causes trouble for theories that provide an analysis of perceptual content in non-semantic, non-intentional, and non-phenomenal terms, such as those found in Millikan (1984), Fodor (1990), Neander (2017), and Schellenberg (2018). I show how such theories can be extended so that they cover such cases (...) without giving up their core commitments. (shrink)

This chapter begins with an empirical analysis of attitudes towards the law, which inspires a philosophical re-examination of the moral status of the rule of law. The chapter analyses survey data from the US about law-related attitudes and legal compliance. Consistently with prior studies, it finds that people’s ascriptions of legitimacy to the legal system are predicted strongly by their perceptions of the procedural justice and lawfulness of police and court officials’ action. Two factors emerge as significant predictors of (...) people’s compliance with the law: (i) their belief that they have a (content-independent, moral) duty to obey the law (which is one element of legitimacy, as defined in the chapter); and (ii) their moral assessment of the content of specific legal requirements (referred to in the chapter as ‘perceived moral content of laws’). The chapter also observes an interactive relationship between these two factors. The authors then identify a parallel (similarly interactive) modality in the way that form and content mutually affect the value of the rule of law. They argue that Lon Fuller’s precepts of legality possess an expressive moral quality, but that the extent to which their expressive effect materialises is sensitive to the moral quality of the law’s content. (shrink)

I conduct an empirical analysis of the temporally asymmetric character of our epistemic access to the world by providing an experimental scheme whose results represent the core empirical content of the epistemic asymmetry. I augment this empirical content by formulating a gedanken experiment inspired by a proposal from David Albert. This second experiment cannot be conducted using any technology that is likely to be developed in the foreseeable future, but the expected results help us to state an (...) important constraint on our ability to know the future. Finally, I show that a third experiment concerning precognition, described by Michael Scriven and John Mackie, does not characterize any additional empirical content but does help to illustrate why it is unlikely that any precognition exists. (shrink)

Intentionalism about visual experiences is the view according to which the phenomenal character of a visual experience supervenes on the content of this experience. One of the most influential objections to this view is about blur: seeing a fuzzy contour clearly and seeing a sharp contour blurrily have different phenomenal character but the same content. I argue that this objection does not work if we understand perceptual content simply, and not particularly controversially, as partly constituted by the (...) sum total of perceptually attributed properties, some determinable, some determinate. (shrink)

The present study investigated the viewpoints of visitors and their experiences with al-Qarawiyyin as conveyed through Google Reviews. The study aimed to determine the primary aspects that underlie the visitors’ experiences at al-Qarawiyyin and to examine these experiences through sentiment. This research examined both quantitative ratings and qualitative comments. The reviews were obtained from Google by utilizing the Google Review Downloader tool. The reviews underwent content analysis in order to categorize them into distinct aspects or categories. Subsequently, a (...) sentiment analysis was performed to ascertain positive, negative, and neutral viewpoints about the institution. The results unveiled seven key aspects pertaining to visitor experiences: access, education, facilities, general aspects, location, national and international heritage, and serenity. The categories of national and international heritage, as well as facilities, were given greater emphasis, while the category of location received comparatively less attention. Based on the examination of star ratings and sentiment, it can be inferred that the majority of visitors were satisfied with their experience at al-Qarawiyyin. Nevertheless, the aspect that garnered the bulk of one-two-star ratings and negative reviews was the access category. The results of this study carry significant implications for scholarly investigations in the fields of higher education and tourism. (shrink)

Klein, Nguyen, & Zhang (in press) argued that the evolutionary transition from respondent to agent during the Cambrian Explosion would be a promising vantage point from which to gain insight into the evolution of organic sentience. They focused on how increased competition for resources -- in consequence of the proliferation of new, neurally sophisticated life-forms -- made awareness of the external world (in the service of agentic acts) an adaptive priority. The explanatory scope of Klein et al (in press) was (...) limited to consideration of the conscious apprehension of externally sourced content – i.e., content delivered from the sensory registration of objects occupying phenomenal space. But consciousness – at least for humans -- takes its objects from internal as well as external sources. In the present article we extend their analysis to the question of how internally sourced content (i.e., mental states) became the object of conscious apprehension. (shrink)

While the idea of philosophy as conceptual analysis has attracted many adherents and undergone a number of variations, in general it suffers from an authority problem with two dimensions. First, it is unclear why the analysis of a concept should have objective authority: why explicating what we mean should express how things are. Second, conceptual analysis seems to lack intersubjective authority: why philosophical analysis should apply to more than a parochial group of individuals. I argue that (...) Hegel’s conception of social ontology, focused on his concept of “ethical life” (Sittlichkeit), helps to explain how concepts (and their explication) have both objective and intersubjective authority in the social domain. Hegel claims that modern institutions are the product of self-conscious purposes, so that they are conceptually constituted. Concepts do not just represent these objects and so depend on a contingent relation to them. As many contemporary social ontologists agree, this means that our concepts of these institutions are uniquely epistemically “transparent.” They have objective authority. Concepts have intersubjective authority in the modern world as well, according to Hegel. However, I show that this feature of Hegel’s account does not rely on the solution to a philosophical problem. Rather, since the concepts of modern ethical life are “essentially contested,” their content depends on the practical and political agreement of modern subjects. This means that concepts can only have objective authority if some prior intersubjective agreement has been reached. The role of philosophy as conceptual analysis is thus importantly dependent on political developments. (shrink)

Interpreting the content of the law is not limited to what a relevant lawmaker utters. This paper examines the extent to which implied and implicit content is part of the law, and specifically whether the Gricean concept of conversational implicature is relevant in determining the content of law. Recent work has focused on how this question relates to acts of legislation. This paper extends the analysis to case law and departs from the literature on several key (...) issues. The paper's argument is based upon two points: Precedent-setting judicial opinions may consist of multiple conversations, of which some entail opposing implicata, and if a particular precedent-setting judicial opinion consists of multiple conversations, of which some entail opposing implicata, then no meaningful conversational implicatum is part of the content of that particular precedent-setting opinion. Nevertheless, the paper's conclusion leaves open the prospect of gleaning something in between conversational implicature and what is literally said, namely, conversational impliciture. (shrink)

This thesis is about experiential content: what it is; what kind of account can be given of it. I am concerned with identifying and attacking one main view - I call it the inferentialist proposal. This account is central to the philosophy of mind, epistemology and philosophy of science and perception. I claim, however, that it needs to be recast into something far more subtle and enriched, and I attempt to provide a better alternative in these pages. The inferentialist (...) proposal holds that experiential content is necessarily under¬pinned by sophisticated cognitive influences. My alternative, the continuum theory, holds that these influences are relevant to experience only at certain levels of organisation and that at other levels there are contents which such features do not capture at all. Central to my account is that there are degrees to which cognitive influences affect experiential content; indeed, for the most part, experience is an amalgam of both inferential and non-inferential features. I claim that the inferentialist proposal is fundamentally flawed and deserves replacement, and I argue that my alternative fills the hollow that remains. The thesis is divided into four sections. In Part I, Chapter 1, I introduce two traditionally rival views of experiential content. In Chapter 2, I develop my continuum alternative. Chapter 3 assesses the relationship between experience and language, while Chapter 4 explores the relationship between beliefs and experience. The overall argument is that it has been a mistake to understand experience simply in inferential or non-inferential terms. In Part II, I examine the structure of mental content. Chapter 5 is concerned with the kinds of experiences which escape the inferentialist analysis. Chapter 6 considers Kant’s metaphysic of experience counterpointed to Lorenz’s reading of his work in the light of evolutionary biology. Chapter 7 treats animal experience in relation to the continuum view I am developing, while Chapter 8 reviews Fodor’s contribution to perceptual psychology. It is argued that the view of experiential content being developed is both consistent with empirical data on informationally local perceptual sub-systems, but also accords well with evolutionary theory and a naturalist interpretation of Kant’s taxonomy. Part III deals with inferentialism in the philosophy of science. In Chapter 9, I assess the theory dependence of observation thesis as it is advanced by Paul Feyerabend. I bring out of his account a subtle confusion concerning the importance of inference in the context of scientific inquiry. Part IV deals with the issue of experience in the philosophy of mind. In Chapter 10, I look at Wilfred Sellars’s attack on sense data theories. Chapter 11 confronts Paul Churchland’s treatment of ‘folk psychology’ while Chapter 12 isolates the issue of experiential qualia and the position of property dualism. I offer a critical review of Thomas Nagel’s work in this chapter and claim that his position can be read in a way which is consistent with the continuum account I am developing. I conclude the thesis in the usual fashion with a summary of the central claims. (shrink)

I offer a meta-level analysis of realist arguments for the reliability of ampliative reasoning about the unobservable. We can distinguish form-driven and content-driven arguments for realism: form-driven arguments appeal to the form of inductive inferences, whilst content-driven arguments appeal to their specific content. After regimenting the realism debate in these terms, I will argue that the content-driven arguments are preferable. Along the way I will discuss how my analysis relates to John Norton’s recent, more (...) general thesis that the grounds for licit induction are always material. (shrink)

The paper argues for the view advocated by Yolton that Locke's ideas are best viewed as intentional contents. Drawing on Smith and McIntyre's distincition between object- and content-theories of intentionality I seek it show that it belongs to the second category. The argument relies mainly on the analysis of Locke's discussion of meaning, the reality and adequacy of ideas and real essence.