This essay explores the evolving systems ofjustz$5cation and morality that emerge fiom mother and child dialogues. Contrasting a mother's ethic of care with a surrounding cultural climate of violence, I argue that children are capable of providing insigljt to this seeming socialcontradiction.Ifocus on a series cfconversa- tionsI've had with my nowJiveyear oldson with regard to naturally occurringharm (i.e.yfloods,disease...) and human createdharm (i.e. war, violence,physical intimi- dation). I argue that my son's effortsto "makethe symbolic reap are consistent with philosopher Gareth (...) Matthews' (1980) claim that young children are capable of complexphilosophicalthinkingthoughitmaygodormantatabouteightornineyears of age. M y view is thatphilosophicalthinking between mother and child typifies the feminist ideal that respecful investigation can occur between two parties who are uneyual in terms of socialpower. Though my son is smaller, less experienced, and physically weaker, he has come to believe that these qualities will not be relevant in others' assessment of his explanations of the world. (shrink)

The Rachels–Temkin spectrum arguments against the transitivity of better than involve good or bad experiences, lives, or outcomes that vary along multiple dimensions—e.g., duration and intensity of pleasure or pain. This paper presents variations on these arguments involving combinations of good and bad experiences, which have even more radical implications than the violation of transitivity. These variations force opponents of transitivity to conclude that something good is worse than something that isn’t good, on pain of rejecting the good altogether. That (...) is impossible, so we must reject the spectrum arguments. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the critical success factors and investigate the benefits that might be gained once implementing Electronic Customer Relationship Management at HEI from employee perspective. The study conducted at Al Quds Open University in Palestine and data collected from (300) employee through a questionnaire which consist of four variables. A number of statistical tools were intended for hypotheses testing and data analysis, including Spearman correlation coefficient for Validity, reliability correlation using Cronbach’s alpha, and Frequency (...) and Descriptive analysis. The overall findings of the current study show that all the features were important for staff and it was critical success factors, at the same time, websites were providing all the features discussed by the theory whereas staff showed their willingness to use those features if provided. It is also discovered that implementing Electronic Customer Relationship Management can cause staff retention, were provided efficiently and needed to be improved. Research limitations: The survey findings were based on QOU employee in Palestine, UAE and KSA branches not included in the study. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to bring recent work on metaphysical grounding to bear on the phenomenon of social construction. It is argued that grounding can be used to analyze social construction and that the grounding framework is helpful for articulating various claims and commitments of social constructionists, especially about social identities, e.g., gender and race. The paper also responds to a number of objections that have been leveled against the application of grounding to social construction from Elizabeth Barnes, (...) Mari Mikkola, and Jessica Wilson. (shrink)

This paper will be broken down into four sections. In §1, I try to assuage a worry that intellectual humility is not really an intellectual virtue. In §2, we will consider the two dominant accounts of intellectual humility in the philosophical literature—the low concern for status account the limitations-owing account—and I will argue that both accounts face serious worries. Then in §3, I will unpack my own view, the doxastic account of intellectual humility, as a viable alternative and potentially a (...) better starting place for thinking about this virtue. And I’ll conclude in §4 by trying to defend the doxastic account against some possible objections. (shrink)

The paper considers contemporary models of presumption in terms of their ability to contribute to a working theory of presumption for argumentation. Beginning with the Whatelian model, we consider its contemporary developments and alternatives, as proposed by Sidgwick, Kauffeld, Cronkhite, Rescher, Walton, Freeman, Ullmann-Margalit, and Hansen. Based on these accounts, we present a picture of presumptions characterized by their nature, function, foundation and force. On our account, presumption is a modal status that is attached to a claim and has the (...) effect of shifting, in a dialogue, a burden of proof set at a local level. Presumptions can be analysed and evaluated inferentially as components of rule-based structures. Presumptions are defeasible, and the force of a presumption is a function of its normative foundation. This picture seeks to provide a framework to guide the development of specific theories of presumption. (shrink)

Recently, Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) got much attention from researchers even though ITS educational technology began in the late 1960s and ITS is just embryonic from laboratories into the field. In this paper we outline an intelligent tutoring system for teaching basics of the databases system called (MDB). The MDB was built as education system by using the authoring tool (ITSB). MDB contains learning materials as a group of lessons for beginner level which include relational database system and lessons in (...) the process to install and set up a database. MDB system has exams for each level of the Lessons. An evaluation was done to see the effectiveness the MDB among learners and instructors. The outcome of the evaluation was promising. (shrink)

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) has a wide influence on the exchange rate, education, health, training, and educational programs. In this paper we describe an intelligent tutoring system that helps student study computer networks. The current ITS provides intelligent presentation of educational content appropriate for students, such as the degree of knowledge, the desired level of detail, assessment, student level, and familiarity with the subject. Our Intelligent tutoring system was developed using ITSB authoring tool for building ITS. A preliminary evaluation of (...) the ITS was done by a group of students and teachers. The results were acceptable. (shrink)

I use Plotinus to present absolute divine simplicity as the consequence of principles about metaphysical and explanatory priority to which most theists are already committed. I employ Phil Corkum’s account of ontological independence as independent status to present a new interpretation of Plotinus on the dependence of everything on the One. On this reading, if something else (whether an internal part or something external) makes you what you are, then you are ontologically dependent on it. I show that this account (...) supports Plotinus’s claim that any entity with parts cannot be fully independent. In particular, I lay out Plotinus’s case for thinking that even a divine self-understanding intellect cannot be fully independent. I then argue that a weaker version of simplicity is not enough for the theist since priority monism meets the conditions of a moderate version of ontological independence just as well as a transcendent but complex ultimate being. (shrink)

Philosophers of action of different persuasions have suggested that there is a tight connection between the phenomenon of intending and the phenomena of “being settled on” and of “settling” a course of action. For many, this connection supports an important constraint on intention: one may only intend what one takes one’s so intending as settling. Traditionally, this has been understood as a doxastic constraint on intention: what one takes one’s intention as settling is what one believes one’s so intending as (...) settling. This paper proposes an alternative conception of such a constraint. The idea is to conceive of it in terms of the attitude of reliance, rather than of belief. The aim of the paper is three-fold: to clarify the connection between intending to act and the phenomena of being settled on and of settling a course of action, to provide support for the reliance conception of the cited constraint, and to show that this conception drives a wedge in the familiar dispute, between doxastic and conative accounts of intention, as to whether intending to act necessarily involves the belief that one will so act. (shrink)

This is a survey article on reductive views of shared intention.

A comprehensible model is proposed aimed at an analysis of the reasons for theory change in science. According to the model the origins of scientific revolutions lie not in a clash of fundamental theories with facts, but of “old” fundamental theories with each other, leading to contradictions that can only be eliminated in a more general theory. The model is illustrated with reference to physics in the early 20th century, the three “old” theories in this case being Maxwellian electrodynamics, statistical (...) mechanics and thermodynamics. Modern example, referring to general relativity and quantum field theory fusion, is highlighted. Key words: Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, Stepin, Bransky,Mamchur, mature theory, structure, Einstein, Lorentz, , Boltzmann, Planck, Hawking, De Witt. (shrink)

In this essay, I explain why Gabriel De Marco's attempts to "solve" the invalidity problem for the Zygote Argument were non-starters. The first solution he describes was originally developed by Mickelson (2012/2015) and already adopted by Mele (2013), but De Marco presents it as his own (using an idiosyncratic labelling system). De Marco's second response fails because it is grounded in a patently invalid argument. Most importantly, De Marco (like Mele before him) fails to even mention that Mickelson wasn't interested (...) in the Zygote Argument per se, but was using this argument to demonstrate how readily philosophers were willing to make basic philosophical errors and why these errors are causing general confusion & stagnation throughout the free-will debate. The upshot of the invalidity objection is not that some particular argument had a little logical flaw. The objection served to highlight several novel and dialectically significant lessons, such as: it is surprisingly difficult to close the "explanatory gap" between incompossibilism and incompatibilism without relying upon invalid arguments or question-begging assumptions. Indeed, there appears to be no argument in the free-will literature which does so -- i.e. there appears to be no logically viable, non-question-begging argument for incompatibilism in the free-will literature as a whole. Apparently many philosophers don't want to "fuss" over fundamental philosophical errors nor investigate the new avenues of research that have opened up by exposing them. This paper was written for fussier philosophers. [] *My thanks to the referees and editors at Philosophia for publishing this corrective when Phil Studies would not. []. (shrink)

Allies are extremely important to LGBT rights. Though we don’t often enumerate what tasks we expect allies to do, a fairly common conception is that allies “support the LGBT community.” In the first section I introduce three difficulties for this position that collectively suggest it is conceptually insufficient. I then develop a positive account by starting with whom allies are allied to instead of what allies are supposed to do. We might obviously say here that allies are allied to the (...) LGBT community, but I will argue that this community is better thought of as a loose coalition because there are often intersectional issues and conflicting interests that challenge any unified sense of community. I argue that people typically become allies because a friend or family member is experiencing some kind of specific harm; if that harm or discrimination is what causally explains why people become allies, then allies are required to do more than we commonly think. Although allies have a prima facie obligation to honor what members of a subcommunity identify as a harm, this obligation is defeasible if an ally believes fulfilling the obligation would be harmful. I conclude by looking at how we can understand what an ally is in terms of a larger discussion about moral obligations. If people already have these obligations, whatever they are, because morality requires it, then the status “ally” is redundant. I conclude by showing that certain social statuses can not only transform or reprioritize prior moral commitments, but can also introduce new kinds of responsibility that an agent did not have before. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the role of non-humans in Aquinas’ account of moral learning. I intend to show that the entire created order can play an important role in demonstrating to us the life of virtue, and argue that non-human exemplars offer important advantages to the moral learner. I begin by addressing apparent problems with this approach, founded on the observation that human virtue, for Aquinas, is unique to humans. I resolve these by showing that Aquinas’ approach to exemplars (...) is fundamentally analogical, meaning that exemplars point beyond themselves and need not necessarily live the good life to which they direct learners. I show that this means that Aquinas can use non-humans as moral exemplars and offer examples of him doing just that. Finally, I offer an assessment of the benefits of this approach. Among other things, it offers ethicists new ways to focus on particular virtues and provides a plausible way to include non-humans in the moral realm. (shrink)

The first section of this article focuses on the treatment of “time travel” in science-fiction literature and film as presented in the secondary literature in that field. The first anthology I will consider has a metaphysical focus, including (a) relating the time travel of science fiction to the banal time travel of all living beings, as we move inexorably toward the future; and (b) arguing for the filmstrip as the ultimate metaphor for time. The second anthology I will consider has (...) a more political focus, arguing that the “special effects” form of science-fiction films, rather than the visual or narrative content of science-fiction-films, is truly imaginative and futural. The second section of this article ties together a variety of concepts and insights between time-travel cinema and Deleuze’s Cinema 1, suggesting (among other things) that (c) time-traveling characters in cinema function as a redoubled phenomenon of the “mobile sections” of Bergsonian duration (in reference to Henri Bergson), and (d) time-travel cinema vividly illustrates the imagistic nature of the entire world. (shrink)

This article is the attempt of an historically oriented analysis focused on the role of Nigerian music as a cultural hub for the export of African cultural influences into the Black diaspora in the United States and its anticipation by the Free Jazz/Avantgarde-scene as well as the import of key-values related to the Black Power-movement to the African continent. The aim is to demonstrate the leading role and international impact of Nigeria's cultural industry among sub-saharan African nation states and its (...) specific ability to absorb and incorporate elements of Western culture. -/- After a short discussion of African influences on jazz music in general and the socio-political, cultural, and artistic context in which Free Jazz emerged, examples for the articulation of African consciousness among influencing key figures such as saxophonist John Coltrane or the Art Ensemble of Chicago are being presented. Furthermore, the personal and ideological links between the Avantgarde Jazz-scene and the Black Power-movement - especially the Black Panther Party - are made transparent. -/- In a second step the central influence of the Nigerian drum-pioneer Babatunde Olatunji on the Africanization of US-Jazz musicians, his personal and creative impact on John Coltrane, as well as the Black Power-movement is being highlighted. On the other hand, Coltrane, Free Jazz, and the Black Panther Party are being portrayed as a central creative and ideological turn in the career and work of Fela Kuti and towards political activism and his efforts to implement and apply the Africa-inspired Black Power -struggle of the US on the African continent in order to fight post-colonial forms of oppression. -/- . (shrink)

Catharine Macaulay was one of the most significant republican writers of her generation. Although there has been a revival of interest in Macaulay amongst feminists and intellectual historians, neo-republican writers have yet to examine the theoretical content of her work in any depth. Since she anticipates and addresses a number of themes that still preoccupy republicans, this neglect represents a serious loss to the discipline. I examine Macaulay’s conception of freedom, showing how she uses the often misunderstood notion of virtue (...) to reconcile the individual and collective elements inherent in the republican model. In her own analysis of the deep-rooted social obstacles that stand in the way of women becoming free, Macaulay identifies a serious problem that confronts all republicans, namely how to secure freedom in the face of entrenched structural imbalances that systematically disadvantage certain classes of person. In the end, I conclude that Macaulay herself cannot overcome the issues she raises. This in no way diminishes the importance of her work since her diagnosis is as relevant today as in her own time. (shrink)

Viewed in the light of the remarkable performance of ‘Watson’ - IBMs proprietary artificial intelligence computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language - on the US general knowledge quiz show ‘Jeopardy’, we review two experiments on formal systems - one in the domain of quantum physics, the other involving a pictographic languaging game - whereby behaviour seemingly characteristic of domain understanding is generated by the mere mechanical application of simple rules. By re-examining both experiments in the context (...) of Searle’s Chinese Room Argument, we suggest their results merely endorse Searle’s core intuition: that ‘syntactical manipulation of symbols is not sufficient for semantics’. Although, pace Watson, some artificial intelligence practitioners have suggested that more complex, higher-level operations on formal symbols are required to instantiate understanding in computational systems, we show that even high-level calls to Google translate would not enable a computer qua ‘formal symbol processor’ to understand the language it processes. We thus conclude that even the most recent developments in ‘quantum linguistics’ will not enable computational systems to genuinely understand natural language. (shrink)

Reflections on digital mourning in the wake of the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando 2016.

It is discerned what light can bring the recent historical reconstructions of maxwellian optics and electromagnetism unification on the following philosophical/methodological questions. I. Why should one believe that Nature is ultimately simple and that unified theories are more likely to be true? II. What does it mean to say that a theory is unified? III. Why theory unification should be an epistemic virtue? To answer the questions posed genesis and development of Maxwellian electrodynamics are elucidated. It is enunciated that the (...) Maxwellian Revolution is a far more complicated phenomenon than it may be seen in the light of Kuhnian and Lakatosian epistemological models. Correspondingly it is maintained that maxwellian electrodynamics was elaborated in the course of the old pre-maxwellian programmes’ reconciliation: the electrodynamics of Ampére-Weber, the wave theory of Young-Fresnel and Faraday’s programme. To compare the different theoretical schemes springing from the different language games James Maxwell had constructed a peculiar neutral language. Initially it had encompassed the incompressible fluid models; eventually – the vortices ones. The three programmes’ encounter engendered the construction of the hybrid theory at first with an irregular set of theoretical schemes. However, step by step, on revealing and gradual eliminating the contradictions between the programmes involved, the hybrid set is “put into order” (Maxwell’s term). A hierarchy of theoretical schemes starting from ingenious crossbreeds (the displacement current) and up to usual hybrids is set up. After the displacement current construction the interpenetration of the pre-maxwellian programmes begins that marks the commencement of theoretical schemes of optics, electricity and magnetism real unification. Maxwell’s programme surpassed that of Ampére-Weber because it did absorb the ideas of the Ampére-Weber programme, as well as the presuppositions of the programmes of Young-Fresnel and Faraday properly co-ordinating them with each other. But the opposite statement is not true. The Ampére-Weber programme did not assimilate the propositions of the Maxwellian programme. Maxwell’s victory over his rivals became possible because the gist of Maxwell’s unification strategy was formed by Kantian epistemology looked in the light of William Whewell and such representatives of Scottish Enlightenment as Thomas Reid and Sir William Hamilton. Maxwell did put forward as basic synthetic principles the ideas that radically differed from that of Ampére-Weber approach by their open, flexible and contra-ontological, genuinly epistemological, Kantian character. For Maxwell, ether was not the ultimate building block of physical reality, from which all the charges and fields should be constructed. “Action at a distance”, “incompressible fluid”, “molecular vortices”, etc. were contrived analogies for Maxwell, capable only to direct the researcher at the “right” mathematical relations. Key words: J.C. Maxwell, unification of optics and electromagnetism, I. Kant, T. Reid, W. Hamilton . (shrink)

John Searle and Roger Penrose are two staunch critics of computationalism who nonetheIess believe that with the right framework the mind can be naturalized. while they may be successful in showing the shortcomings of computationalism, I argue that their alternative noncomputational frameworks equally fail to carry out the project to naturalize the mind. The main reason is their failure to resolve some fundamental incompatibilities between mind and science. Searle tries to resolve the incompatibility between the subjectivity of consciousness and the (...) objectivity of silence by means of conceptual clarification. He, howeve4 fails to deal with the concepts crucial to this incompatibility, namely, the publicness of scientific knowledge and the privacy of psychological knowledge. Penrose tries to resolve the incompatibility between the non-computationality of psychological process and the computationality of scientific process by expanding the scope of science through some radical changes in quantum physics. His strategy, howeve4 has the danger of trivializing the distinction between science and non-science thereby putting into question the very value of the project to naturalize the mind. In addition, the feasibility of this strategy remains dubious in light of the mysteries that still surround quantum physics. (shrink)

For some time now moral psychologists and philosophers have ganged up on Aristotelians, arguing that results from psychological studies on the role of character-based and situation-based influences on human behavior have convincingly shown that situations rather than personal characteristics determine human behavior. In the literature on moral psychology and philosophy this challenge is commonly called the “situationist challenge,” and as Prinz has previously explained, it has largely been based on results from four salient studies in social psychology, including the studies (...) conducted by Hartshorne and May, Milgram, Isen and Levin, and Darley and Batson. The situationist challenge maintains that each of these studies seriously challenges the plausibility of virtuous personal characteristics by challenging the plausibility of personal characteristics more generally. In this article I undermine the situationist challenge against Aristotelian moral psychology by carefully considering major problems with the conclusions that situationists have drawn from the empirical data, and by further challenging the accuracy of their characterization of the Aristotelian view. In fact I show that when properly understood the Aristotelian view is not only consistent with empirical data from developmental science but can also offer important insights for integrating moral psychology with its biological roots in our natural and social life. (shrink)

In the face of continuing assumptions by many scientists and journal editors that p-values provide a gold standard for inference, counter warnings are published periodically. But the core problem is not with p-values, per se. A finding that “p-value is less than α” could merely signal that a critical value has been exceeded. The question is why, when estimating a parameter, we provide a range (a confidence interval), but when testing a hypothesis about a parameter (e.g. µ = x) we (...) proceed as if “=” entails exact equality of the parameter with x. That standard is hard to meet, and is not a standard expected for power calculations, where we are satisfied to reject a null hypothesis H0 if the result is merely “detectably” different from (exact) H0. This paper explores, with resampling (simulation) methods, the impacts on p-values, and alternatives, if the null hypothesis is defined as a thick or thin range of values. It also examines, empirically, the extent to which the p-value may or may not be a good predictor of the probability that H0 is true, given the distribution of the data. (shrink)

In der musikalischen Methode der kollektiven Improvisation kommt eine Spielauffassung zum Ausdruck, deren demokratisch-emanzipatorische Grundeinstellung Vergleiche mit dem von Jürgen Habermas formulierten Konzept der idealen Sprechsituation nahe legt. Diese Vermutung wird im Rahmen einer einleitenden Annäherung an die kollektive Improvisation als von Interaktivität und Synchronizität geprägtes Beziehungsgeschehen näher ausgeführt. Nach einer Diskussion des improvisatorischen Handelns in der Musik in Bezug auf theoretische, historische und psychologische Aspekte werden die verschiedenen, aus dem Free Jazz der 1960er Jahre hervorgegangenen Entwicklungsstufen der freien bzw. (...) kollektiven Improvisation dargestellt. Im Anschluss daran wird die Kollektiv-Improvisation unter Bezugnahme auf das Konzept der idealen Sprechsituation diskutiert und im interkulturellen Kontext verortet, wobei die von Musikern wie Derek Bailey geforderte Sublimierung idiomatischer, kulturell geprägter Ausdrucksformen durch die individuelle Entwicklung einer charakteristischen Klangsprache am Instrument als egalisierend für die tendenziell asymmetrisch geprägten Dialogformen dieser Situation erläutert wird. Inklusive Interviews mit Evan Parker, Alexander von Schlippenbach und Joe Fonda. (shrink)

2nd edition. The theory of logical consequence is central in modern logic and its applications. However, it is mostly dispersed in an abundance of often difficultly accessible papers, and rarely treated with applications in mind. This book collects the most fundamental aspects of this theory and offers the reader the basics of its applications in computer science, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science, to name but the most important fields where this notion finds its many applications.

The role of the physiological processes involved in human vision escapes clarification in current literature. Many unanswered questions about vision include: 1) whether there is more to lateral inhibition than previously proposed, 2) the role of the discs in rods and cones, 3) how inverted images on the retina are converted to erect images for visual perception, 4) what portion of the image formed on the retina is actually processed in the brain, 5) the reason we have an after-image with (...) antagonistic colors, and 6) how we remember space. This theoretical article attempts to clarify some of the physiological processes involved with human vision. The global integration of visual information is conceptual; therefore, we include illustrations to present our theory. Universally, the eyeball is 2.4 cm and works together with membrane potential, correspondingly representing the retinal layers,photoreceptors, and cortex. Images formed within the photoreceptors must first be converted into chemical signals on the photoreceptors’ individual discs and the signals at each disc are transduced from light photons into electrical signals. We contend that the discs code the electrical signals into accurate distances and are shown in our figures. The pre-existing oscillations among the various cortices including the striate and parietal cortex,and the retina work in unison to create an infrastructure of visual space that functionally ‘‘places” the objects within this ‘‘neural” space. The horizontal layers integrate all discs accurately to create a retina that is pre-coded for distance. Our theory suggests image inversion never takes place on the retina,but rather images fall onto the retina as compressed and coiled, then amplified through lateral inhibition through intensification and amplification on the OFF-center cones. The intensified and amplified images are decompressed and expanded in the brain, which become the images we perceive as external vision. (shrink)

Publication date: 29 September 2016 Source: Author: Samy S. Abu Naser, Mazen J. Al Shobaki, Youssef M. Abu Amuna This paper aims to measure knowledge management maturity in higher education institutions to determine the impact of knowledge management on high performance. Also the study aims to compare knowledge management maturity between universities and intermediate colleges. This study was applied on five higher education institutions in Gaza strip, Palestine. Asian productivity organization model was applied to measure Knowledge Management Maturity. Second dimension (...) which assess high performance was developed by the authors. The controlled sample was. Several statistical tools were used for data analysis and hypotheses testing, including reliability correlation using Cronbach’s alpha, “ANOVA”, Simple Linear Regression and Step Wise Regression. The overall findings of the current study shows that maturity level is in the second level. Findings also support the main hypothesis and it is sub- hypotheses. The most important factors effecting high performance are: Processes, knowledge management leadership, People, knowledge management Outcomes. Furthermore the current study is unique by the virtue of its nature, scope and way of implied investigation, as it is the first comparative study between universities and intermediate colleges in Gaza Strip that explores the status of knowledge management maturity using the Asian productivity Model. (shrink)

Understanding the mechanics of consciousness remains one of the most important challenges in modern cognitive science. One key step toward understanding consciousness is to associate unconscious physiological processes with subjective experiences of sensory, motor, and emotional contents. This article explores the role of various cellular membrane potential differences and how they give rise to the dynamic infrastructure of conscious experience. This article explains that consciousness is a body-wide, biological process not limited to individual organs because the mind and body are (...) unified as one entity; therefore, no single location of consciousness can be pinpointed. Consciousness exists throughout the entire body, and unified consciousness is experienced and maintained through dynamic repolarization during inhalation and expiration. Extant knowledge is reviewed to provide insight into how differences in cellular membrane potential play a vital role in the triggering of neural and non-neural oscillations. The role of dynamic cellular membrane potentials in the activity of the central nervous system, peripheral nervous system, cardiorespiratory system, and various other tissues (such as muscles and sensory organs) in the physiology of consciousness is also explored. Inspiration and expiration are accompanied by oscillating membrane potentials throughout all cells and play a vital role in subconscious human perception of feelings and states of mind. In addition, the role of the brainstem, hypothalamus, and complete nervous system (central, peripheral, and autonomic)within the mind-body space combine to allow consciousness to emerge and to come alive. This concept departs from the notion that the brain is the only organ that gives rise to consciousness. (shrink)

Ethical consequentialist vegetarians believe that farmed animals have lives that are worse than non-existence. In this paper, I sketch out an argument that wild animals have worse lives than farmed animals, and that consistent vegetarians should therefore reduce the number of wild animals as a top priority. I consider objections to the argument, and discuss which courses of action are open to those who accept the argument.

'Chance' is defined as an event on the time scale withour any cause before it appears. That means, that cause and effect is identical. This is the only way to integrate chance into a consistent theory of causality. The identity of cause and effect is called AHK theorem (Aristotle-Hegel-Kaiser).

This is a transcript of a conversation between P F Strawson and Gareth Evans in 1973, filmed for The Open University. Under the title 'Truth', Strawson and Evans discuss the question as to whether the distinction between genuinely fact-stating uses of language and other uses can be grounded on a theory of truth, especially a 'thin' notion of truth in the tradition of F P Ramsey.

Diabetes is a major public health issue that affects the nations of our time to a large extent and is described as a non-communicable epidemic. Diabetes mellitus is a common disease where there is too much sugar (glucose) floating around in your blood. This occurs because either the pancreas can’t produce enough insulin or the cells in body have become resistant to insulin. The concentration in this paper is on diagnosis diabetes by designing a proposed expert system. The main goal (...) of this expert system is to get the appropriate diagnosing of the illness, dealing with it quickly, and tips for permanent treatment whenever possible is given out. SL5 object expert system language was used for designing and implementing the proposed expert system. (shrink)

In this paper an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model, for predicting the category of a tumor was developed and tested. Taking patients’ tests, a number of information gained that influence the classification of the tumor. Such information as age, sex, histologic-type, degree-of-diffe, status of bone, bone-marrow, lung, pleura, peritoneum, liver, brain, skin, neck, supraclavicular, axillar, mediastinum, and abdominal. They were used as input variables for the ANN model. A model based on the Multilayer Perceptron Topology was established and trained using (...) data set which its title is “primary tumor” and was obtained from the University Medical Centre, Institute of Oncology, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia Test data evaluation shows that the ANN model is able to correctly predict the tumor category with 76.67 % accuracy. (shrink)

Automatic detection of diseases and anatomical landmarks in medical images by the use of computers is important and considered a challenging process that could help medical diagnosis and reduce the cost and time of investigational procedures and refine health care systems all over the world. Recently, gastrointestinal (GI) tract disease diagnosis through endoscopic image classification is an active research area in the biomedical field. Several GI tract disease classification methods based on image processing and machine learning techniques have been proposed (...) by diverse research groups in the recent past. However, yet effective and comprehensive deep ensemble neural network-based classification model with high accuracy classification results is not available in the literature. In this thesis, we review ways and mechanisms to use deep learning techniques to research on multi-disease computer-aided detection about gastrointestinal and identify these images. We re-trained five state-of-the-art neural network architectures, VGG16, ResNet, MobileNet, Inception-v3, and Xception on the Kvasir dataset to classify eight categories that include an anatomical landmark (pylorus, z-line, cecum), a diseased state (esophagitis, ulcerative colitis, polyps), or a medical procedure (dyed lifted polyps, dyed resection margins) in the Gastrointestinal Tract. Our models have showed results with a promising accuracy which is a remarkable performance with respect to the state-of-the-art approaches. The resulting accuracies achieved using VGG, ResNet, MobileNet, Inception-v3, and Xception were 98.3%, 92.3%, 97.6%, 90% and 98.2%, respectively. As it appears, the most accurate result has been achieved when retraining VGG16 and Xception neural networks with accuracy reache to 98% due to its high performance on training on ImageNet dataset and internal structure that support classification problems. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the moral dimensions of gender affirmation. I argue that the moral value of gender affirmation is rooted in what Iris Murdoch called loving attention. Loving attention is central to the moral value of gender affirmation because such affirmation is otherwise too fragile or insincere to have such value. Moral reasons to engage in acts that gender affirm derive from the commitment to give and express loving attention to trans people as a way of challenging their (...) marginalization. In the latter part of the paper, I will discuss how my arguments bear on recent arguments by Robin Dembroff and Daniel Wodak (2018) on the use of gender-neutral language. They argue that we have a duty not to use gender-specific pronouns for anyone. Their conclusion turns, in part, on a rejection of gender affirmation as a moral duty. The value of gender affirmation, rooted in our moral perception of trans people, should make us skeptical of this conclusion, in favor of a more nuanced and pluralistic approach to the ethics of gendering. (shrink)

The genetic modification of pigs as a source of transplantable organs is one of several possible solutions to the chronic organ shortage. This paper describes existing ethical tensions in xenotransplantation (XTx) that argue against pursuing it. Recommendations for lifelong infectious disease surveillance and notification of close contacts of recipients are in tension with the rights of human research subjects. Parental/guardian consent for pediatric xenograft recipients is in tension with a child’s right to an open future. Individual consent to transplant is (...) in tension with public health threats that include zoonotic diseases. XTx amplifies concerns about justice in organ transplantation and could exacerbate existing inequities. The prevention of infectious disease in source animals is in tension with the best practices of animal care and animal welfare, requiring isolation, ethologically inappropriate housing, and invasive reproductive procedures that would severely impact the well-being of intelligent social creatures like pigs. (shrink)

The research aims to study the role of strategic and operational planning as approach for crises management in UNRWA - Gaza Strip field- Palestine. Several descriptive analytical methods were used for this purpose and a survey as a tool for data collection. Community size was (881), and the study sample was stratified random (268). The overall findings of the current study show that strategic and operational planning is performed in UNRWA. The results of static analysis show that there are a (...) relation between strategic and operational planning and crises management. In spite this relation existence, it need more improvement and expanding. Also there are shortcomings in the way that organization manages the crises before and after they occur. A crisis management is only practicing during the crisis. The study suggests that UNRWA must invest in more resources to enhance strategic and operational palming and improve other methods to face potential crises in the future. (shrink)

Waiting time is widely used in health and social policy to make resource allocation decisions, yet no general account of the moral significance of waiting time exists. We provide such an account. We argue that waiting time is not intrinsically morally significant, and that the first person in a queue for a resource does not ipso facto have a right to receive that resource first. However, waiting time can and sometimes should play a role in justifying allocation decisions. First, there (...) is a duty of fairness prohibiting line-cutting where a sufficiently just queue exists. Second, waiting time has several morally attractive features that can justify its incorporation into allocation schemes. Where candidates are in relevantly similar circumstances, allocating by waiting time is relatively efficient, maximizes distribution equality relative to other Pareto efficient distributions, and treats candidates fairly. The claim that allocation using waiting time is fair is controversial. Some have claimed that formal lotteries are a fairer way to select among equal beneficiaries. We argue that lotteries are no fairer than allocation based on waiting time when it is equiprobable how a prospective queue will be ordered. In practice, lotteries share many of the disadvantages of queues; which is fairer will depend on contingent features of the allocation scenario. The upshot is that first-come, first-served is in fact a just way to allocate resources in many of the cases where it seems pre-theoretically compelling, and waiting time has unique normative properties which frequently justify its incorporation into resource allocation schemes. (shrink)

I show that conceptual philosophical anarchism, the claim that law cannot give reasons for action, is entailed by several popular theories about law. Reductionists about practical authority believe that all supposedly legitimate practical authority reduces to forms of theoretical authority. They tend to embrace anarchism, but some readers might not be clear why. Trigger theorists about reason-giving believe that all reason-giving merely activates pre-existing conditional reasons. Natural lawyers hold that all legal reasons are sourced in the natural law, which entails (...) that positive law cannot provide reasons for action. If you are attracted to any of these theories and still think that positive law creates new practical reasons, you might have to give up one or the other position. If anarchism is entailed by believing the normativity in law’s directives pre-dates the directive, only a few may be able to avoid it, Hans Kelsen, Mark Greenberg, and Joseph Raz being the most likely. (shrink)

As inductive decision-making procedures, the inferences made by machine learning programs are subject to underdetermination by evidence and bear inductive risk. One strategy for overcoming these challenges is guided by a presumption in philosophy of science that inductive inferences can and should be value-free. Applied to machine learning programs, the strategy assumes that the influence of values is restricted to data and decision outcomes, thereby omitting internal value-laden design choice points. In this paper, I apply arguments from feminist philosophy of (...) science to machine learning programs to make the case that the resources required to respond to these inductive challenges render critical aspects of their design constitutively value-laden. I demonstrate these points specifically in the case of recidivism algorithms, arguing that contemporary debates concerning fairness in criminal justice risk-assessment programs are best understood as iterations of traditional arguments from inductive risk and demarcation, and thereby establish the value-laden nature of automated decision-making programs. Finally, in light of these points, I address opportunities for relocating the value-free ideal in machine learning and the limitations that accompany them. (shrink)

Twenty-first century science faces a dilemma. Two of its well-verified foundation stones - relativity and quantum theory - have proven inconsistent. Resolution of the conflict has resisted improvements in experimental precision leaving some to believe that some fundamental understanding in our world-view may need modification or even radical reform. Employment of the wave-front model of electrodynamics, as a propagation process with a Markov property, may offer just such a clarification.

I argue for an account of grasping, or understanding that, on which we grasp via a higher‐order mental act of Husserlian fulfillment. Fulfillment is the act of matching up the objects of our phenomenally presentational experiences with those of our phenomenally representational thought. Grasping‐by‐fulfilling is importantly different from standard epistemic aims, in part because it is phenomenal rather than inferential. (I endorse Bourget's (2017) arguments to that effect.) I show that grasping‐by‐fulfilling cannot be a species of propositional knowledge or belief, (...) and that it is not essentially connected to justification. I motivate a revisionary epistemology on which achieving propositional knowledge and coming to grasp are dual epistemic aims. My account makes sense of a common occurrence—that we are often unmoved to act on our beliefs until we come to phenomenally experience them in some way. It also explains puzzling features of human inquiry. (shrink)

The research aims to identify the trends of Palestinian higher educational institutions in Gaza Strip as learning organizations from the perspective of senior management in the Palestinian universities in Gaza Strip. The researchers used descriptive analytical approach and used the questionnaire as a tool for information gathering. The questionnaires were distributed to senior management in the Palestinian universities. The study population reached (344) employees in senior management is dispersed over (3) Palestinian universities. A stratified random sample of (182) employees from (...) the Palestinian universities was selected and the recovery rate was (69.2%). Statistical analysis (SPSS) program was used for analysis and processing the data. The study found the following results: There is an agreement about: the importance of the focus of "organizational structure" with an average approval, the importance of "technological infrastructure" axis with high approval, and the importance of "strategic" with an average approval. The results concluded that the study sample agree on the importance of "organizational dimension" highly. The results showed that the sample believe that the "strategic leadership" level in the universities got medium-approval. There is a fair level agreement about the axis of interest "teams / committees". There is an agreement about the importance of the "human dimension" moderately. The results showed that the sample is highly agreed about the importance of focus of the "knowledge management", and the focus of the "continuing education". They agreed weakly to somewhat about the importance of the focus of "scientific research", moderately agree about the importance of the center of "institutional culture", agree moderately on the importance of "cognitive dimension". The results showed that the sample largely agree on the importance of the focus of "strategic partnerships and alliances". They agree highly on the axis "keep up with the labor market" and on the focus of the importance of "technology incubators". The results showed that the sample moderately agree about the importance of the theme on "consulting and training", the importance of the focus of "social responsibility", and the focus of the "Community dimension". The study found a group of recommendations including: there is a need to provide suitable environment that achieve learning organizations. There is a need to develop the technological infrastructure (hardware, software, networks, databases, and human skills) because of the great advantages that they offer. The universities need to adopt knowledge management in the academic and administrative departments because knowledge is the core of the work of these departments. The establishment of technology incubators in universities to adopt outstanding university research projects, to protect, to supports, and to market them; furthermore, to develop the capabilities and skills of employees in the field of information technology. (shrink)

This article investigates the hitherto under-examined relations between affirmative action, paternalism and respect. We provide three main arguments. First, we argue that affirmative action initiatives are typically paternalistic and thus disrespectful towards those intended beneficiaries who oppose the initiatives in question. Second, we argue that not introducing affirmative action can also be disrespectful towards these potential beneficiaries because such inaction involves a failure to adequately recognize their moral worth. Third, we argue that the paternalistic disrespect involved in affirmative action is (...) alleviated when the potential beneficiaries’ preferences against such initiatives are adaptive. We conclude that although there is a relevant sense in which paternalistic affirmative action is disrespectful, it may well be more disrespectful not to pursue such policies. (shrink)