Contemporary republicanism is characterized by three main ideas: free persons, who are not subject to the arbitrary power of others; free states, which try to protect their citizens from such power without exercising it themselves; and vigilant citizenship, as a means to limit states to their protective role. This book advances an economic model of such republicanism that is ideologically centre-left. It demands an exit-oriented state interventionism, one that would require an activist government to enhance competition and resource exit from (...) dominating relationships within markets of all types, be they marital, labour, or residential. The substantial intervention and redistribution necessitated by such an approach make it leftist, while its tendency to work with rather than against the grain of markets makes it centrist. It is, in short, a contribution to progressive republican political thought, but one that is less social-democratic than market-democratic in character. (shrink)

In Gaudium et Spes, the Catholic Church describes marital discernment as the married couple’s “common reflection and effort… [that] involves a consideration of their own good and the good of their children” and also as “an estimation of the good of the family… [that necessitates] prudent reflection and common decision.” With this description, we can say that the Catholic Church expects and desires married couples to resolve marital and family conflicts by coming together in discernment. And yet, how should married (...) couples discern? How should they exercise marital discernment? Since one cannot just go on discerning blindly without minding some rules, without following some basic steps, Ricoeur would emphasize that “discernment calls for a hermeneutics.” But how should hermeneutics be integrated into the process of marital discernment? This paper makes an attempt to integrate hermeneutics into the process of marital discernment by drawing some key principles from Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic phenomenology and Karol Wojtyła’s phenomenology of spousal love. In so doing, this paper considers how the dynamics of marital discernment can be rendered more balanced, and hence more effective, in attaining conflict resolution within the family. (shrink)

Conditional willing of morally impermissible actions like adultery tells us something about the moral agent, as does the liability to will such actions in certain unrealised contingencies. However, I argue, a liability to will wrongful actions in some circumstances need not (though it might) affect the moral permissibility of the act intended here and now e.g. terms of going through a marriage ceremony or enjoying sexual acts with one's spouse. This chapter explores the issue of conditional, preparatory or contingent intentions (...) of spouses with critical reference to work of John Finnis in this area. (shrink)

The paper explores an egalitarian norm widely accepted today, which I call the Marital Non‐Hierarchy Standard. According to this standard, marital relationships should be non‐hierarchical; neither partner may be more dominant than the other. The Marital Non‐Hierarchy Standard is exceptional: in almost all associations, including many financial, professional, educational and recreational ones, in almost all spheres of life, some hierarchies, within certain limits, are widely believed to be morally legitimate. I argue that in marital relations, too, some hierarchies should be (...) accepted as morally legitimate. It might be argued that marital relations should be loving, and love requires that lovers will have the same degree of power. However, contemporary analyses of love show that love is consistent with (some) hierarchies. It might also be argued that justice requires that lovers will have equal power. However, theories of distributive justice such as Rawls's, Sen's, Dworkin's, and almost all others allow some marital hierarchies. Thus, both the love requirement and the justice requirement allow some hierarchical marital relationships and conflict with the Marital Non‐Hierarchy Standard. Until other justifications for this standard are presented, it is unclear why it should be endorsed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:130 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Laura Bisaillon, Alana Cattapan, Annelieke Driessen, Esther van Duin, Shannon Spruit, Lorena Anton, and Nancy S. Jecker Doing Academia Differently: “I Needed Self-Help Less Than I Needed a Fair Society” A great deal of harm is being done by belief in the virtuousness of work. — Bertrand Russell, “In Praise of Idleness” We are committed to doing (...) academia in particular ways, and not in others. — Brocher Foundation Feminist Collective I had decided that becoming a university professor might be a good fit; friends and colleagues had suggested that I would be valuable to a university, so I prepared for a restructuring of my family life.1 I read Tokarczyk and Fay’s Working-Class Women in the Academy and Babcock and Laschever’s Women Don’t Ask to gather understandings of the milieu I was entering. I now see that my preparations had not shined sufficient light on the social and structural factors that organize the contemporary university.... As it turns out, the restructuring of our lives within the working conditions, priorities, and rationalities of this professional milieu triggered unanticipated and painful effects.... Had Mountz published her article “Women on the Edge” before I decided on a career migration into the university system and, had I been fortunate enough to discover it, I would have made other career choices.2 1. The authors, who describe themselves as the Brocher Foundation Feminist Collective, indicate their personal narratives in this text using italics. 2. Michelle M. Tokarczyk and Elizabeth A. Fay, eds., Working-Class Women in the Academy: Laborers in the Knowledge Factory (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993); Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Bisaillon et al. 131 Introduction: Personal, Professional, and Political We are seven women who met at the Brocher Foundation in Hermance, Switzerland, in July 2017, where we had been selected to spend a few months as research fellows. This competitively awarded opportunity is open to persons fluent in English, from graduate students to senior scholars, with or without academic appointment, whose scholarship advances knowledge about the ethical, legal, and social implications of health and biotechnologies.3 When we found ourselves on the shores of Lake Leman with the gift of time, we began opening up to each other in unexpected, compelling ways. Whatever our vantage point in the hierarchy of the university system, we discovered that there was remarkable overlap in our experiences as women in academia. When we began writing, our authoring team was composed of two graduate students, four faculty members at the assistant professor rank, and one full professor, residing in Canada, the Netherlands, Romania, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Our plural subject position led us to underexplored and imaginative responses to broader social issues, which we share in this article as the “Brocher Foundation Feminist Collective.” We analyze our experiences from our standpoint as women health researchers laboring in the academy. Our similarities and differences were exciting entry points for discussion and analysis: we are all of eastern or western European descent. We have different countries of birth, mother tongues, ages, disciplinary training and career trajectories, relationships to chronic illness and disability, marital status, and experiences with parenthood. We bring the troubles and contradictions we experience as academics into conversation with each other. We seek to productively illustrate and emphasize that the tensions we see around us, and also feel within us, arise as a result of how the academic system is organized, produced, and sustained across time, place, and space. Press, 2003); Alison Mountz, “Women on the Edge: Workplace Stress at Universities in North America,” The Canadian Geographer 60, no. 2 (2016): 205–18. 3. We experienced this fellowship as a valuable opportunity. But we also recognized that our access to it was mediated by social, economic, or other obligations. As countries in the global north continue to tighten their national border regimes, marginalized academics, especially those from the global South, were less likely to succeed in getting a Swiss visa or securing relevant temporal and economic resources. 132 Bisaillon et al. The promise here, we posit... (shrink)

The chapter advances two claims: first, that commitment to one’s spouse is only instrumentally valuable, adding no intrinsic value to the relationship. Moreover, commitment has costs: it partially forecloses the future, thus making one less attentive to life’s possibilities; therefore, it would be desirable for people to achieve the same goods without commitment. The second, more ambitious, claim is that commitment in general, and marital commitments in particular, are problematic instruments for securing the good of romantic and sexual love. It (...) makes sense to prefer that another person’s (perhaps especially, romantic or sexual) love for you is sustained by inclination rather than commitment. In addition, the pragmatic reasons for commitment are weak in relation to activities that, ideally, are process-oriented rather than goal-oriented—such as loving another person. (shrink)

Two slogans define structuralism: contemporary mathematics studies structures; mathematical objects are places in those structures. Shapiro’s version of structuralism posits abstract objects of three sorts. A system is “a collection of objects with certain relations” between these objects. “An extended family is a system of people with blood and marital relationships.” A baseball defense, e.g., the Yankee’s defense in the first game of the 1999 World Series, is a also a system, “a collection of people with on-field spatial and ‘defensive-role’ (...) relations”. “A structure is the abstract form of a system” ; it consists of “a collection of places [sometimes called positions or offices] and a finite collection of functions and relations on these places”. (shrink)

Nomophobia (no-mobile-phone phobia) is the fear and anxiety of being without a mobile phone. This study pioneers the investigation of nomophobia in Afghanistan using the Nomophobia Questionnaire (NMP-Q), addressing a crucial gap in the field. We collected statistical data from 754 undergraduate medical students, comprising men (56.50 %) and women (43.50 %), and analyzed the dimensions of nomophobia. While results revealed that all but two participants were nomophobic, they identified three significant dimensions affecting the level of nomophobia among participants: (a) (...) gender, (b) age, and (c) marital status. The study's contributions are precious, given the peculiarity of Afghan political turmoil, security, and human rights issues, especially for women. For example, the study's data collection was abruptly halted in December 2022 due to the Taliban regime's decision to make it illegal for women to enroll in universities as students. Therefore, while examining the characteristics of nomophobia across societies is imperative, it is also vital to investigate what is true of one society, Afghanistan, at one point in time and space. The study concludes by emphasizing the need to broaden participants' scope in future studies to better understand the prevalence of nomophobia across broader societal contexts and forces. (shrink)

[Author's note: although this paper is written in Korean, it is archived here in the hope of bringing it to the attention of a wider audience including scholars of pragmatics and of Korean linguistics.] Recently, Korean linguists and philosophers of language have engaged in discussions on the meaning and usage of the Korean determiner ‘uri’ as in such phrases as ‘uri manura [our wife]’ which might seem strange given the monogamous marital institution of Korea. The aim of this paper is (...) to provide a new interpretation of such expressions as ‘uri manura’. To that end, various proposals concerning the meaning and usage of the determiner ‘uri’ in those expressions will be critically examined first. Then it will be argued that ‘uri manura’ is a polite form of ‘nae manura [my wife]’ and is used when one needs, or wants, to speak in a polite tone in deference to the hearer or the wider audience. The upshot will be that the ubiquitous use of ‘uri’ in Korean is not due to the collectivist nature of the Korean society, as has often been claimed, but rather results from the linguistic embodiment of the Confucian tradition in Korea that values courteous words and behavior. (shrink)

I compare Rosamond’s relationship with her husband in Middlemarch with Rosamond’s marital relationship in L.A.G. Strong’s short story “The Seal.” I interpret the latter fiction as addressing the unpleasant question: what sort of decent man can suppress Rosamond?

Like Socrates, Aspasia did not leave any writings. We know about her from secondary sources. In this paper, I will show a number of things in the reports of what Aspasia said and did that are philosophically interesting, especially in what they show about dealing with various kinds of crises, from marital to political ones. First, I will argue for the most probable reconstruction of her life. Second, I will elucidate what kind of method Aspasia employed when considering marital issues. (...) Third, I will endeavor to prove that Plato’s representation of Aspasia was not a mockery, as some authors argue. Furthermore, the most significant philosophical points of Aspasia’s Funeral Speech will be highlighted and assessed. Eventually, I will attempt to figure out what Plato’s reasons might have been to ascribe this speech to a woman. (shrink)

The concept of organizational commitment is defined as employees's strong belief in accepting organizational goals and values; a strong desire to spend high-level effort taking into account the benefit of the organization and to maintain membership in the organization. Although there are different classifications related to organizational commitment in the literature, affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment sub-dimensions were emphasized. This study includes the implementation of an organizational commitment questionnaire developed by Allen and Meyer (1990) and adapted to Turkish (...) by Wasti (2000) on a total of 53 employees in a participation bank operating in the East Black Sea Region. As a result of the study, no statistically significant relationship was found between the organizational commitment levels of the bank employees and the variables of age, marital status, gender, lenght of work, job title, income level. When the organizational score means of the employees were evaluated, it was seen that the average scores of affective commitment were higher than continuance and normative commitment. -/- . (shrink)

The Indian sarus crane Grus antigone antigone is the world's graceful and tallest flying bird. It is a nonmigratory and only resident breeding crane of Indian sub continent. It has been declared as 'State Bird' by Government of Uttar Pradesh. Pairing of the bird for life long and legendry marital devotion of the species has earned its global popularity. Ecological and environmental condition of this lake is quite supportive for the survival of this vulnerable species. The present study deals with (...) the distribution and conservation of this vulnerable species in and around the Alwara lake of district Kaushambi, Uttar Pradesh. A total of 335 cranes were actually observed in 2012, 425 in 2013, 510 in 2014 and 537 in 2015, although more cranes were claimed to exist in this area by the local people. This communication is clearly depicting continuous increasing trend in population of Indian sarus crane during their exploration from 2012-2015 in the area studied, although its population is decreasing at global level. (shrink)

Even though co‐parenthood is one of the most significant close personal relationships that people can have, there is relatively little philosophical work on the moral duties that co‐parents owe each other. This may be due to the increasingly questionable assumption, still common in our societies, that co‐parenthood arises naturally from marriage or romantic coupledom and thus that commitment to a co‐parent evolves from a commitment to a marital or romantic partner. In this article, we argue that co‐parenthood should be seen (...) as a relationship in its own right, which generates specific moral duties. Co‐parents should come to explicit agreements with each other regarding the most important areas of potential conflict between them. Such agreements may have to be renegotiated over time. We explore some possible non‐negotiable co‐parental duties such as the duties not to alienate the child from the other parent(s) and not to trap a co‐parent in a particularly vulnerable situation. We consider some legal and societal implications of our argument and, finally, suggest some pragmatic benefits of our proposal. (shrink)

Abstract: In the wide range of issues of violence against women in Arab and Western societies, Professor Brian Sykes wrote about how the future can be without men by looking at the male dominance of Y chromosome on female X chromosome and trying to trace the first forms of male dominance The World To the extent that some geneticists think theoretically that a female ovum is fertilized by an ovum from another female to produce a new human being is of (...) course a female and This method, although it is an abnormal way of thinking to retaliate against a male Y chromosome, expresses a reaction that needs scientific analysis. in the Arab societies, the influence of masculine dominance on the female society has emerged , many forms have taken place. Women are surrounded by a masculine belt that they may not be able to negotiate with them because of ignorance and illiteracy and the spread of some inherited customs and traditions. In addition, other matters that are subject to mutual agreement between the parties and without agreement, with the industrial revolution, women started to work to achieve their own self, then they became involved in education in there society, started to claim some rights , Various women's associations encouraged them, witch allowed women to demand full and undiminished equality between men and women in all fields, And encouraged the abolition of the subordination of children to fathers and the equality of male and female in inheritance until the demand to abolish the upbringing of children in the institutions of the marital common and raising them in communes groups. Or in alternative care institutions while freeing them from the bond of married life and from restricting maternal emotion to be a man's vow and the replacement of artificial reproduction in order to reach their highest point in the equality curve. Although these claims reflect the amount and cruelty of a world Women, however, want the desired equality in this way to be false equality and will not achieve the desired return of stolen rights and did not meet the purpose, but was a call for the continuation of community violence, and although some women in the communities wish to live in a society without men from the abundance of what they have But there is still room for love, tolerance and change, based on the beautiful feelings of women and their feelings and emotions towards men. This study may have been considered as a call to rephrase parenting methods as a preventive method to mitigate future violence against women. The purpose of the study may be to direct and work with new generations alongside current generations involved in daily violence practices and rework to deal with this in a gradual and simple way to alleviate the issues of violence in society. (shrink)

Al-Makhtoobah (The fiancé), a social-realistic drama that can be claimed as the first drama to make a mark in Indian Arabic literature published in 2009 by Syed Ehtisham Ahmad Nadvi, depicts generally a vivid picture of Indian Muslim society and some unwelcomed marital issues especially, in the form of dialogue. Al-Makhtoobah, is a tragedy in manners turning round the pertinacious attempts of a young girl to pass her life with her drunkard irresponsible husband. Before marriage, her rich parents were in (...) a promise to marry her with a meritorious madrassa student, while a fraudulent became successful to make their promise fail showing fallaciously superiority of a boy who becomes her husband later. Henceforth, the fraudulent occupies wealth of the girl and her father and finally this incident makes her father mysterious, mad and he dies. The writer Syed Ehtisham Ahmad Nadvi is a famous Indian Arabic literary critic, litterateur; an alumnus of Aligarh Muslim University, Jamia Millia Islamia and the great Islamic learning center namely Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama, Lucknow. He is also one of the shining figures in the history of Indian Arabic literature who wrote a good number of books and articles in Arabic as well as Urdu and retired as a professor of Arabic in the University of Calicut, Kerala in the year 2000 A.D. The present paper aims to study the themes of Al-Makhtoobah and styles that have followed the writer in making of the drama an artistic one. Further, it attempts to present writer’s academic, administrative and artistic excellence. (shrink)

In the 1960s, before the promulgation of Humanae Vitae, the Catholic philosophers Elizabeth Anscombe and Herbert McCabe OP debated whether there are convincing natural law arguments for the claim that contraception violates an exceptionless moral norm. This article revisits those arguments and critiques McCabe’s approach to natural law, concerned primarily with ‘social sin’ and not simply violations of ‘right reason,’ as one particularly ill-suited to addressing questions in sexual ethics and unable both to distinguish properly between certain forms of sexual (...) wrongdoing and more obviously social sins such as theft, and also to distinguish between ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ sexual acts. Anscombe’s views, I argue, are closer to those of Thomas Aquinas and provide reasons for making the distinctions McCabe does not. An argument concerning the nature of the institution of marriage and the effects of non-marital acts on that institution is proposed as a way of strengthening Anscombe’s argument that contraception violates an exceptionless moral norm. (shrink)

Recent decades have seen the facilitation of unconventional or even extraordinary reproductive endeavours. Sperm has been harvested from dying or deceased men at the request of their wives; reproductive tissue has been surgically removed from children at the request of their parents; deceased adults’ frozen embryos have been claimed by their parents, in order to create grandchildren; wombs have been transplanted from mothers to their daughters. What is needed for requests to be honoured by healthcare staff is that they align (...) with widely shared expectations about what people’s reproductive potential ought to be, what marital relationships ought to result in, and which kinds of ties are desirable between parents and children. Costly and invasive technologies are not considered excessive when they are used to support the building of appropriate families. However, deviations from dominant reproductive norms, even if technologically simple and convenient to the participants, are unlikely to receive support. In this paper, we offer examples of such deviations and explore their implications. If reproduction is important as a way of creating genetic relationships, should reproductive material in storage be offered to genetic relatives other than the people from whom it originated? And if parents are allowed to have reproductive material collected from their offspring, or even to use it to create babies, should offspring likewise be allowed to use their parents’ reproductive material? We tackle these questions and suggest ways in which interests in genetic ties could be operationalised in a more coherent and less-invasive manner than they currently are. (shrink)

Owing to the differences in the practice of entrepreneurship as occasioned by gender, culture and marital status, widow entrepreneurship ought to be studied separately. This is increasingly being re-echoed by the resilience of widow entrepreneurs in spite of the disinheritance, dehumanizing and discriminatory characteristics of the persisting widowhood practices in South Eastern Nigeria. This study therefore seeks to investigate the moderating role of entrepreneurial self-efficacy in the entrepreneurial experience, financial and non-financial performance of widow entrepreneurships in South Eastern Nigeria. The (...) study adopts cross sectional research design and simple random sampling technique. The generated data via questionnaire were analyzed based on Baron and Kenny’s (1986) four step approach for testing moderation. It was found that entrepreneurial self-efficacy moderates the relationships. The researchers conclude that entrepreneurial self-efficacy can increase or decrease the strength of the relationship between entrepreneurial experience, and financial and non-financial performance of widow entrepreneurships in the long run. (shrink)

This paper examined selected Efik women‟s hairstyles from the past comparing them to modern day trends. The key questions the study sought to answer were: Have there been changes in styles and materials used in designing Efik women‟s hair? Have the meanings associated with these hairstyles changed overtime?The paper uses historical methodology; primary sources are pictures of hairstyles while secondary sources are history books, journals and literature review to arrive at conclusion concerning Efik women hairstyles. Current trends show that there (...) have been some changes in patterns and evolutions in materials used. Meanings are also changing. Whereas in old times, hairstyles could tell age, social class, marital status, occupations and spiritual affinity. This is hardly the case now. (shrink)

I offer an interpretation and defense of John Dewey’s notion of “democratic experiments,” which involve testing moral beliefs through the experience of acting on them on a social scale. Such testing is crucial, I argue, because our social norms and institutions fundamentally shape the relationships through which we develop emotional responses that represent the morally significant concerns of others. Improving those responses therefore depends on deliberate alterations of our social environment. I consider deliberative and activist alternatives and argue that an (...) experimentalist approach better models some prominent cases of social progress, such as the extension of marital rights to same-sex couples. (shrink)

Istoria unui stat poate fi plină de evenimente care nu sunt preconizate. Pentru a cunoaște viitorul trebuie să te raportezi la trecut. Istoria evenimențială este o istorie accidentală plină de necunoscute și de interogări. Autoritatea centrală în istoria omenirii a avut caracter diferit de la stat la stat. Faraoni, împărați, regi sau moguli, toți acești conducători au avut în jurul lor un grup de oameni care i-a ajutat în actul de administrare al țării. În calitatea lor de guvernatori, intendenți, legați (...) sau sub diverse alte denumiri, acești funcționari se aflau în slujba puterii centrale administrative. Rolul acestor funcționari a variat de-a lungul istoriei. Reprezentarea lor nu a fost doar pur formală. Delegarea de autoritate s-a făcut în baza unei rațiuni și a unui calcul pragmatic și anume o reprezentare exactă a voinței liderului în comunități care nu gravitau în jurul centrului său de putere. În istorie, reprezentanții autorității centrale au avut un rol fundamental în promovarea puterii centrale la nivel local, în provincii. Guvernatorii de provincii au fost emisarii puterii centrale, numirea și demiterea lor depinzând de voința unilaterală a conducătorului. Evoluția statală a mărit importanța rolului acestui reprezentant de la simplu emisar sau de la persoana care pune în practică voința conducătorului la un adevărat administrator al problemelor unei comunități. În statele democratice reprezentatul administrației centrale are un rol de gestionar al problemelor curente, dar și de control al diferitelor instituții la nivel local. Am putea spune că este un factor de echilibru și control asumat de autoritatea centrală. Reprezentarea în teritoriu a administrației centrale este o realitate în zilele noastre și o certitudine istorică. Comunitățile au avut nevoie să fie conduse de către lideri, iar liderii care au condus națiuni formate din mai multe comunități au avut nevoie de ajutoare în gestionarea mecanismelor interne ale administrării acelor popoare care au evoluat spre națiuni. Prin urmare, reprezentarea în teritoriu a fost benefică de-a lungul istoriei, iar delegarea de autoritate către persoane atent alese poate chiar întări autoritatea centrală. În epoca postmodernă a statelor democratice, reprezentanții autorității centrale sunt ghidați în luarea deciziilor de către puterea executivă la nivel central, în spiritul legii. Toate deciziile se iau cu respectarea legii, a normelor și a reglementărilor în vigoare. De asemenea, deciziile se iau și cu conștientizarea unei etici a funcției pe care o îndeplinesc. (shrink)

Embodied cognitive theories predict that linguistic conceptual representations are grounded and continually represented in real world, sensorimotor experiences. However, there is an on-going debate on whether this also holds for abstract concepts. Grammar is the archetype of abstract knowledge, and therefore constitutes a test case against embodied theories of language representation. Former studies have largely focussed on lexical-level embodied representations. In the present study we take the grounding-by-modality idea a step further by using reaction time (RT) data from the linguistic (...) processing of nominal classifiers in Chinese. We take advantage of an independent body of research, which shows that attention in hand space is biased. Specifically, objects near the hand consistently yield shorter RTs as a function of readiness for action on graspable objects within reaching space, and the same biased attention inhibits attentional disengagement. We predicted that this attention bias would equally apply to the graspable object classifier but not to the big object classifier. Chinese speakers (N = 22) judged grammatical congruency of classifier-noun combinations in two conditions: graspable object classifier and big object classifier. We found that RTs for the graspable object classifier were significantly faster in congruent combinations, and significantly slower in incongruent combinations, than the big object classifier. There was no main effect on grammatical violations, but rather an interaction effect of classifier type. Thus, we demonstrate here grammatical category- specific effects pertaining to the semantic content and by extension the visual and tactile modality of acquisition underlying the acquisition of these categories. We conclude that abstract grammatical categories are subjected to the same mechanisms as general cognitive and neurophysiological processes and may therefore be grounded. (shrink)

Ang layunin ng artikulong ito ay tuklasin ang konsepto ng pag-asa ng mga Pilipino sa suwerte sa pamamagitan ng pagtaya sa lotto. Tatalakayin ditto ang kahulugan ng mga paniniwala at saloobin ng mga Pilipino tungkol sa kapalaran at kayamanan, lalo na sa konteksto ng pagtaya sa lottery. Tinalakay din sa artikulo ang kahalagahan ng sikolohiyang Pilipino sa pagsusuri ng pag-asa ng mga Pilipino sa suwerte at lottery. Layunin ng artikulong ito na: (1) Malaman ang epekto ng paniniwala sa suwerte at (...) malas sa pagtaya sa lotto sa pangarap at pagkilos ng mga Pilipino sa iba't ibang aspeto ng buhay, (2) Paano nakakaapekto ang popularidad ng lotto sa mga mahihirap na sektor ng lipunan, at ano ang potensyal na mga banta at pinsala nito (3) Mga sikolohiyang Pilipinong masasalamin sa paniniwala ng mga Pilipino ukol sa lotto bilang isang instrumento ng pag-asang pangkabuhayan, at ano ang mga implikasyon nito sa lipunang Pilipino. Ang mga natuklasan at ang kanilang mga implikasyon ay maaaring mag-ambag sa ating pag-unawa sa mga pangunahing sanhi at epekto ng pag-asa ng mga Pilipino sa suwerte na may kaugnayan sa lotto, at maaaring humantong sa mga reporma at solusyon upang matugunan ang mga kaugnay na isyu. Sa huli, ang artikulong ito ay naglalayong magbigay ng mas malalim na kaalaman at pag-unawa sa kulturang Pilipino ng pag-asa at paniniwala na may kaugnayan sa suwerte at kapalaran. (shrink)

This paper analyses the National Populist Challenges to Europe’s Center Right. It assesses the cases of the UK, Germany and France. It poses three questions for Europe: How will political integration be achieved and maintained? What policies will foster economic inclusion in the Eurozone? And, third, what are the best means to achieve economic solvency and growth. The paper make a case that neoliberal economic policies over the past decades have undermined some nations' public sector and have also contributed to (...) tensions between the geographical east and west of Europe. (shrink)

As these opening quotes acknowledge, the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) represents a core puzzle within the formal mathematics of game theory.3 Its rise in conspicuity is evident figure 2.1 above demonstrating a relatively steady rise in incidences of the phrase’s usage between 1960 to 1995, with a stable presence persisting into the twenty first century. This famous two-person “game,” with a stock narrative cast in terms of two prisoners who each independently must choose whether to remain silent or speak, each advancing (...) self-interest at the expense of the other and thereby achieving a mutually suboptimal outcome, mires any social interaction it is applied to into perplexity. The logic of this game proves the inverse of Adam Smith’s invisible hand: individuals acting on self interest will achieve a mutually suboptimal outcome. However, as this chapter illuminates, the assumptions underlying game theory drive this conclusion. (shrink)

The truth of every human being is the end his life with death, and this leads to leaving assets and funds for those after him and can lead to hate between the heirs, it has made a point of Islamic law on all aspects of life, including the subject of the inheritance of the deceased. The main problem is how to get the knowledge of the basics of inheritance. This paper reviews work done in the use of expert system software (...) to calculate inheritance in Islam. A proposed expert system was designed and developed using CLIPS language to calculate the inheritance in Islam. (shrink)

There are three questions associated with Simpson’s paradox (SP): (i) Why is SP paradoxical? (ii) What conditions generate SP? and (iii) How to proceed when confronted with SP? An adequate analysis of the paradox starts by distinguishing these three questions. Then, by developing a formal account of SP, and substantiating it with a counterexample to causal accounts, we argue that there are no causal factors at play in answering questions (i) and (ii). Causality enters only in connection with action.

In her provocative discussion of the challenge posed to the traditional impartialist, justice-focused conception of morality by the new-wave care perspective in ethics, Annette Baier calls for ‘a “marriage” of the old male and newly articulated female... moral wisdom,’ to produce a new ‘cooperative’ moral theory that ‘harmonize[s] justice and care.’ I want in this paper to play matchmaker, proposing one possible conjugal bonding: a union of two apparently dissimilar modes of what Nel Noddings calls ‘meeting the other morally,’ a (...) wedding of respect and care. (shrink)

Despite a large and multifaceted effort to understand the vast landscape of phenotypic data, their current form inhibits productive data analysis. The lack of a community-wide, consensus-based, human- and machine-interpretable language for describing phenotypes and their genomic and environmental contexts is perhaps the most pressing scientific bottleneck to integration across many key fields in biology, including genomics, systems biology, development, medicine, evolution, ecology, and systematics. Here we survey the current phenomics landscape, including data resources and handling, and the progress that (...) has been made to accurately capture relevant data descriptions for phenotypes. We present an example of the kind of integration across domains that computable phenotypes would enable, and we call upon the broader biology community, publishers, and relevant funding agencies to support efforts to surmount today's data barriers and facilitate analytical reproducibility. (shrink)

Anydomainofscientificresearchhasitssustainingorthodoxy. Thatis, research on a problem, whether in astronomy, physics, or biology, is con- ducted against a backdrop of broadly shared assumptions. It is these as- sumptionsthatguideinquiryandprovidethecanonofwhatisreasonable-- of what "makes sense." And it is these shared assumptions that constitute a framework for the interpretation of research results. Research on the problem of how we see is likewise sustained by broadly shared assump- tions, where the current orthodoxy embraces the very general idea that the business of the visual system is to (...) create a detailed replica of the visual world, and that it accomplishes its business via hierarchical organization and by operatingessentiallyindependently of other sensorymodalitiesas well as independently of previous learning, goals, motor planning, and motor execution. (shrink)

Essentialism in philosophy is the position that things, especially kinds of things, have essences, or sets of properties, that all members of the kind must have, and the combination of which only members of the kind do, in fact, have. It is usually thought to derive from classical Greek philosophy and in particular from Aristotle’s notion of “what it is to be” something. In biology, it has been claimed that pre-evolutionary views of living kinds, or as they are sometimes called, (...) “natu-ral kinds”, are essentialist. This static view of living things presumes that no tran-sition is possible in time or form between kinds, and that variation is regarded as accidental or inessential noise rather than important information about taxa. In contrast it is held that Darwinian, and post-Darwinian, biology relies upon varia-tion as important and inevitable properties of taxa, and that taxa are not, therefore, kinds but historical individuals. Recent attempts have been made to undercut this account, and to reinstitute essentialism in biological kind terms. Others argue that essentialism has not ever been a historical reality in biology and its predecessors. In this chapter, I shall outline the many meanings of the notion of essentialism in psychology and social science as well as science, and discuss pro- and anti-essentialist views, and some recent historical revisionism. It turns out that nobody was essentialist to speak of in the sense that is antievolutionary in biology, and that much confusion rests on treating the one word, “essence” as meaning a single notion when in fact there are many. I shall also discuss the philosophical implica-tions of essentialism, and what that means one way or the other for evolutionary biology. Teaching about evolution relies upon narratives of change in the ways the living world is conceived by biologists. This is a core narrative issue. (shrink)

The article concerns the interpretation of Aquinas' philosophy in the thougt of the swiss theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar.

To vindicate morality against skeptical doubts, Kant must show that agents can be moved to act independently of their sensible desires. Kant must therefore answer a motivational question: how does an agent get from the cognition that she ought to act morally to acting morally? Affectivist interpretations of Kant hold that agents are moved to act by feelings, while intellectualists appeal to cognition alone. To overcome the significant shortcomings of each view, I develop a hybrid theory of motivation. My central (...) interpretive claim is that Kant is a special kind of motivational internalist: on his view, agents are moved to act by a feeling of intellectual pleasure at the prospect of accomplishing a task they have set for themselves, a feeling that originates in free choice. The resulting theory is immune to the challenges facing intellectualism and affectivism, thus strengthening the prospects of Kant’s justification of morality. (shrink)

With the publication of A Theory of Justice in 1971, John Rawls not only rejuvenated contemporary political philosophy but also defended a Kantian form of Enlightenment liberalism called “justice as fairness.” Enlightenment liberalism stresses the development and exercise of our capacity for autonomy, while Reformation liberalism emphasizes diversity and the toleration that encourages it. These two strands of liberalism are often mutually supporting, but they conflict in a surprising number of cases, whether over the accommodation of group difference, the design (...) of civic education, or the promotion of liberal values internationally. During the 1980’s, however, Rawls began to jettison key Kantian characteristics of his theory, a process culminating in the 1993 release of Political Liberalism and completing the transformation of justice as fairness into a Reformation liberalism. -/- Reconstructing Rawls argues that this transformation was a tragic mistake because it jeopardized the most important features of his theory, viz. the lexical priorities of right, liberty, and fair equality of opportunity as well as the difference principle. Controversially, this book contends that Rawls’s so-called “political turn,” motivated by a newfound interest in diversity and the accommodation of difference, has been unhealthy for autonomy-based liberalism and has pushed liberalism more broadly towards cultural relativism, be it in the guise of liberal multiculturalism or critiques of cosmopolitan distributive-justice theories. The book then demonstrates that the central elements of justice as fairness can only be defended within the context of a Kantian Enlightenment liberalism and that Rawls’s hope for a more pluralistic grounding for his theory, endorsed by a wide variety of belief systems present in modern democratic societies, is illusory. -/- Reconstructing Rawls is the first book to systematically compare Rawls’s and Kant’s theories and the first to offer an internal critique and reconstruction of justice as fairness, reconceiving it as a comprehensive, universalistic Kantian liberalism. By doing so, it gives us both the vision of a liberal world order—“a republicanism of all states, together and separately,” as Kant put it—and a mode of justification addressed to all men and women, not as members of particular nations, races, and faiths, but as human beings, as citizens of the world. In short, it reclaims Rawls for the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Robert Nozick, in chapter two of the nature of rationality, proposes two famous problems in decision theory (i.e., Newcomb's problem and Prisoner Dilemma) and two main strategies toward these problems i.e. dominant strategy and dominated or cooperative one. He will try to give a formal principles to calculate the decision values in these situations. In this calculation he goes beyond the standard principle of maximizing expected utility and would try to put forth less ideal and more realistic principles that fit (...) the decision situation in the real world. (shrink)

Phenomenology gives rise to certain ontological considerations that have far-reaching implications for standard conceptions of patient autonomy in medical ethics, and, as a result, the obligations of and to patients in clinical decision-making contexts. One such consideration is the phenomenological reduction in classical phenomenology, a core feature of which is the characterisation of our primary experiences as immediately and inherently meaningful. This paper builds on and extends the analyses of the phenomenological reduction in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty (...) in order to identify and explain its implications for our current understanding of the principle of respect for patient autonomy and the norms of clinical decision making. (shrink)

This paper traces two contradicting beliefs about death and immortality in the writings of Rabbi Hayyim Hirschensohn, and examines these opposing beliefs in his Halakhic ruling, in the case of Autopsies. The paper opens by conceptualizing two possible attitudes regarding the relation between this-world and the ʽother-world’, and by analyzing two main beliefs regarding death and immortality in their relation to the body-spirit distinction (the naturalistic and the spiritualistic approach). It demonstrates how Hirschensohn was holding these two different views. The (...) paper then moves to examine whether his halakhic ruling may help us in understanding which approach was Hirschensohn’s favorable belief, by investigating his halakhic ruling regarding autopsies. Hirschensohn permits to perform such surgeries, however subject to some halakhic limitations. The paper concludes that the naturalistic belief regarding death appears to be the more dominant one in his thought. Finally, I point out a few consequences of this paper, for addressing some contemporary ethical dilemmas regarding human corpses. (shrink)

In bioethics, the predominant categorization of various types of influence has been a tripartite classification of rational persuasion (meaning influence by reason and argument), coercion (meaning influence by irresistible threats—or on a few accounts, offers), and manipulation (meaning everything in between). The standard ethical analysis in bioethics has been that rational persuasion is always permissible, and coercion is almost always impermissible save a few cases such as imminent threat to self or others. However, many forms of influence fall into the (...) broad middle terrain—and this terrain is in desperate need of conceptual refining and ethical analysis in light of recent interest in using principles from behavioral science to influence health decisions and behaviors. This paper aims to address the neglected space between rational persuasion and coercion in bioethics. First, I argue for conceptual revisions that include removing the “manipulation” label and relabeling this space “nonargumentative]influence,” with two subtypes: “reason-bypassing” and “reason-countering.” Second, I argue that bioethicists have made the mistake of relying heavily on the conceptual categories themselves for normative work and instead should assess the ethical permissibility of a particular instance of influence by asking several key ethical questions, which I elucidate, that relate to (1) the impact of the form of influence on autonomy and (2) the relationship between the influencer and the influenced. Finally, I apply my analysis to two examples of nonargumentative influence in health care and health policy: (1) governmental agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) trying to influence the public to be healthier using nonargumentative measures such as vivid images on cigarette packages to make more salient the negative effects of smoking, and (2) a physician framing a surgery in terms of survival rates instead of mortality rates to influence her patient to consent to the surgery. (shrink)

We address the need for a model by considering two competing theories regarding the origin of life: (i) the Metabolism First theory, and (ii) the RNA World theory. We discuss two interrelated points, namely: (i) Models are valuable tools for understanding both the processes and intricacies of origin-of-life issues, and (ii) Insights from models also help us to evaluate the core objection to origin-of-life theories, called “the inefficiency objection”, which is commonly raised by proponents of both the Metabolism First theory (...) and the RNA World theory against each other. We use Simpson’s Paradox (SP) as a tool for challenging this objection. We will use models in various senses, ranging from taking them as representations of reality to treating them as theories/accounts that provide heuristics for probing reality. In this paper, we will frequently use models and theories interchangeably. Additionally, we investigate Conway’s Game of Life and contrast it with our SP-based approach to emergence-of-life issues. Finally, we discuss some of the consequences of our view. A scientific model is testable in three senses: (i) a logical sense, (ii) a nomological sense, and (iii) a current technological sense. The SP-based model is testable in the first two senses but it is not feasible to test it using current technology. (shrink)

This paper aims to identify Performance development and its relationship to demographic variables among users of computerized management information systems in Gaza Electricity Distribution Company. This research used two dimensions. The first dimension is demographic variables among users of computerized management information systems and the second dimension the Development of Performance. The control sample was (360) questioners were distributed and (306) were retrieved back with a percentage of (85%). 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 suggested The results showed that: demographic variables among users of computerized management information systems have a positive relationship on the development of performance in Gaza Electricity Distribution Company, there were no statistically significant differences between the perceptions of respondents about performance development and its relationship to demographic variables among users of computerized management information systems in Gaza Electricity Distribution Company which attributable to gender variable, there exist a significant relationship between perceptions of the respondents for each of the resources (physical, software, and human) for computerized management information systems attributed to variable (age), there are no significant differences in the fields of (organizational resources) for computerized management information systems and (development of performance) attributable to variable (age) and that can be explained by the fact that the senior management deals with job titles not with age, there are significant differences between the perceptions of the respondents for each of the fields of resources (physical, software, and organizational) for computerized management information systems attributed to variable (educational qualification), the presence of a statistically significant differences between the perceptions of the respondents for each of the fields of "organizational resources for demographic variables among users of computerized management information systems " and ”development of performance” due to the variable (years of service), there is no statistically significant differences between respondents' perceptions about the fields of resources (physical, software, and human) for computerized management information systems attributed to variable (years of service). The study recommended the following: The need to strengthen the company's management interest in the use of computerized management information systems in all the systems components and elements as being an important variable which contributes to the development of performance. Strengthening the relationship between the users of information system and personnel systems in the department responsible for the system so that employees understand the technological and technical information needed by all users of information systems. It is essential that the company develop the infrastructure for information technology in general, and computerized management information systems, in particular for the development of performance. Increasing attention to provide material resources of equipment and devices used in the computerized management information system, and the interest in providing technical resources for management information systems keeping pace with technological means and modern techniques and work on the training of personnel to use those systems. Greater attention to human resource computerized management information systems “specialized technicians and end-users" through a variety of disciplines working in the field of computerized management information systems. The current study is unique by the virtue of its nature, scope and way of implied investigation, as it is the first study at Gaza Electricity Distribution Company resources explores the status of demographic variables among users of computerized management information systems and their relationship to the development of performance in Gaza Electricity Distribution Company increasing interest in Computerized management information systems through continuity, keeping pace with technological means and modern techniques. (shrink)

This paper has three main goals. First, to motivate a puzzle about how ignorance-expressing terms like maybe and if interact: they iterate, and when they do they exhibit scopelessness. Second, to argue that there is an ambiguity in our theoretical toolbox, and that exposing that opens the door to a solution to the puzzle. And third, to explore the reach of that solution. Along the way, the paper highlights a number of pleasing properties of two elegant semantic theories, explores some (...) meta-theoretic properties of dynamic notions of meaning, dips its toe into some hazardous waters, and offers characterization theorems for the space of meanings an indicative conditional can have. (shrink)

Deidealization as a topic in its own right has attracted remarkably little philosophical interest despite the extensive literature on idealization. One reason for this is the often implicit assumption that idealization and deidealization are, potentially at least, reversible processes. We question this assumption by analyzing the challenges of deidealization within a menu of four broad categories: deidealizing as recomposing, deidealizing as reformulating, deidealizing as concretizing, and deidealizing as situating. On closer inspection, models turn out much more inflexible than the reversal (...) thesis would have us believe, and deidealization emerges as a creative part of modeling. (shrink)

The vision of natural kinds that is most common in the modern philosophy of biology, particularly with respect to the question whether species and other taxa are natural kinds, is based on a revision of the notion by Mill in A System of Logic. However, there was another conception that Whewell had previously captured well, which taxonomists have always employed, of kinds as being types that need not have necessary and sufficient characters and properties, or essences. These competing views employ (...) different approaches to scientific methodologies: Mill’s class-kinds are not formed by induction but by deduction, while Whewell’s type-kinds are inductive. More recently, phylogenetic kinds (clades, or monophyletic-kinds) are inductively projectible, and escape Mill’s strictures. Mill’s version represents a shift in the notions of kinds from the biological to the physical sciences. (shrink)

As the Zika virus pandemic continues to bring worry and fear to health officials and medical scientists, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) have recommended that residents of the Zika-infected countries, e.g., Brazil, and those who have traveled to the area should delay having babies which may involve artificial contraceptive, particularly condom. This preventive policy, however, is seemingly at odds with the Roman Catholic Church’s position on the contraceptive. As least since the promulgation of (...) Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, the Church has explicitly condemned artificial birth control as intrinsic evil. However, the current pontiff, Pope Francis, during his recent visit to Latin America, remarked that the use of artificial contraception may not be in contradiction to the teaching of Humanae Vitae while drawing a parallel between the current Zika Crisis and the 1960’s Belgian Congo Nun Controversy. The pope mentioned that the traditional ethical principle of the lesser of two evils may be the doctrine that justified the exceptions. The authors of this paper attempt to expand the theological rationale of the pope’s suggestion. In so doing, the authors rely on casuistical reasoning as an analytic tool that compares the Belgian Congo Nun case and the given Zika case, and suggest that the former is highly similar to, if not the same as, the latter in terms of normative moral feature. That is, in both cases the use of artificial contraception is theologically justified in reference to the criteria that the doctrine of the lesser of two evils requires. The authors wish that the paper would provide a solid theological-ethical ground based on which condom-use as the most immediate and effective preventive measure can be recommended in numerous Catholic hospitals as well as among Catholic communities in the world, particularly the most Zika-affected and largest Catholic community in the world, Brazil – 123 million present Brazilian citizens are reported to be Roman Catholic. (shrink)

Intelligent neurotechnology is an emerging field that combines neurotechnologies like brain-computer interface (BCI) with artificial intelligence. This paper introduces a capability framework to assess the responsible use of intelligent BCI systems and provide practical ethical guidance. It proposes two tests, the threshold and flourishing tests, that BCI applications must meet, and illustrates them in a series of cases. After a brief introduction (Section 1), Section 2 sets forth the capability view and the two tests. It illustrates the threshold test using (...) examples from clinical medicine of BCI applications that enable patients with profound disabilities to function at a threshold level through computer mediation. Section 3 illustrates the flourishing test by exploring possible future applications of BCI involving neuroenhancements for healthy people, using examples adapted from research currently underway in the US military. Section 3 applies a capability lens to a complex case involving dual effects, both therapeutic and non-therapeutic, showing how the threshold and flourishing tests resolve the case. Section 4 replies to three objections: neurorights are the best tool for assessing BCI; the two tests are moving targets; and the analysis utilizes a capability view to do work it is not designed for. The paper concludes that a capability view offers unique advantages and gives practical guidance for evaluating the responsible use of present and future BCI applications. Extrapolating from our analysis may help guide other emerging technologies, such as germline gene editing, expected to impact central human capabilities. (shrink)

The majority of studies on absorptive capacity (AC) underscore the importance of absorbing technological knowledge from other firms to create economic value. However, to preserve moral legitimacy and create social value, firms must also discern and adapt to (shifts in) societal values. A comparative case study of eight firms in the food industry reveals how organizations prioritize and operationalize the societal value health in product innovation while navigating inter- and intravalue conflicts. The value-sensitive framework induced in this article extends AC (...) by explaining how technically savvy, economic value–creating firms diverge in their receptivity, articulation, and reflexivity of societal values. (shrink)

Philosophers of science are increasingly interested in engaging with scientific communities, policy makers, and members of the public; however, the nature of this engagement has not been systematically examined. Instead of delineating a specific kind of engaged philosophy of science, as previous accounts have done, this article draws on literature from outside the discipline to develop a framework for analyzing different forms of broadly engaged philosophy of science according to two key dimensions: social interaction and epistemic integration. Clarifying the many (...) forms of engagement available to philosophers of science can advance future scholarship on engagement and promote more strategic engagement efforts. (shrink)

Genes are thought to have evolved from long-lived and multiply-interactive molecules in the early stages of the origins of life. However, at that stage there were no replicators, and the distinction between interactors and replicators did not yet apply. Nevertheless, the process of evolution that proceeded from initial autocatalytic hypercycles to full organisms was a Darwinian process of selection of favourable variants. We distinguish therefore between Neo-Darwinian evolution and the related Weismannian and Central Dogma divisions, on the one hand, and (...) the more generic category of Darwinian evolution on the other. We argue that Hull’s and Dawkins’ replicator/interactor distinction of entities is a sufficient, but not necessary, condition for Darwinian evolution to take place. We conceive the origin of genes as a separation between different types of molecules in a thermodynamic state space, and employ a notion of reproducers. (shrink)