This important and comprehensive work of 18th-century Islamic religious thought written in Arabic by a pre-eminent South Asian scholar provides an extensive and detailed picture of Muslim theology and interpretive strategies on the eve of the modern period.

The effect of recent experience on current behavior has been studied extensively in simple laboratory tasks. We explore the nature of sequential effects in the more naturalistic setting of automobile driving. Driving is a safety-critical task in which delayed response times may have severe consequences. Using a realistic driving simulator, we find significant sequential effects in pedal-press response times that depend on the history of recent stimuli and responses. Response times are slowed up to 100 ms in particular cases, a (...) delay that has dangerous practical consequences. Further, we observe a significant number of history-related pedal misapplications, which have recently been noted as a cause for concern in the automotive safety community. By anticipating these consequences of sequential context, driver assistance systems could mitigate the effects of performance degradations and thus critically improve driver safety. (shrink)

This experiment investigated the effect of format (line vs. bar), viewers’ familiarity with variables, and viewers’ graphicacy (graphical literacy) skills on the comprehension of multivariate (three variable) data presented in graphs. Fifty-five undergraduates provided written descriptions of data for a set of 14 line or bar graphs, half of which depicted variables familiar to the population and half of which depicted variables unfamiliar to the population. Participants then took a test of graphicacy skills. As predicted, the format influenced viewers’ interpretations (...) of data. Specifically, viewers were more likely to describe x–y interactions when viewing line graphs than when viewing bar graphs, and they were more likely to describe main effects and “z–y” (the variable in the legend) interactions when viewing bar graphs than when viewing line graphs. Familiarity of data presented and individuals’ graphicacy skills interacted with the influence of graph format. Specifically, viewers were most likely to generate inferences only when they had high graphicacy skills, the data were familiar and thus the information inferred was expected, and the format supported those inferences. Implications for multivariate data display are discussed. (shrink)

Sustainable development is essentially about taking a view of future generations of people inhabiting the world. It is also about defining actions in the present time of achieving the desired goal of bequeathing a livable world for the future. The view has to revolve around how much importance we assign to the well being of future inhabitants. It is an ethical position that we collectively, as the generation living now, have to take. Making moral judgments about the distant future is (...) difficult for two reasons—there is a plurality of ethical positions and building a collective ethic may be impossible. Yet without a shared view we cannot have concerted action now.This article looks at some of the alternative positions and their practical implications for policy actions. The possibility of having a wider, shared ethic is also discussed. The real challenge lies in knowing nature better and making that knowledge part of culture. Then only there could be a convergence in concerns for the future, for Nature and for the yet unborn generations of human beings. (shrink)

The U.S. Federal regulations allow institutional review boards (IRBs) to approve non-beneficial pediatric research when the risks are a minor increase over minimal, provided that the research is likely to develop generalizable knowledge about the subjects' disorder or condition. This “subjects' condition” requirement is quite controversial; commentators have argued for a variety of interpretations. Despite this considerable disagreement in the literature, there have not been any attempts to apply principles of legal interpretation to determine how the subjects' condition requirement should (...) be understood. (shrink)

Current formal dialectical models postulate normative rules that enable discussants to conduct dialogical interactions without committing fallacies. Though the rules for conducting a dialogue are supposed to apply to interactions between actual arguers, they are without exception theoretically motivated. This creates a gap between model and reality, because dialogue participants typically leave important content-related elements implicit. Therefore, analysts cannot readily relate normative rules to actual debates in ways that will be empirically confirmable. This paper details a new, data-driven method for (...) describing discussants’ actual reply structures, wherein corpus studies serve to acknowledge the complexity of natural argumentation. Rather than refer exclusively to propositional content as an indicator of arguing pro/contra a given claim, the proposed approach to dialogue structure tracks the sequence of dialogical moves itself. This arguably improves the applicability of theoretical dialectical models to empirical data, and thus advances the study of dialogue systems. (shrink)

تشخيص فكري ومعرفي لمفهوم الأسرة ومكانتها في الفكر الإسلامي، وتفحّصٌ علمي ومنهجي لأسس البناء الأسري ومقاصده، وكشفٌ عن تأثير التحوّلات الاجتماعية في الأسرة والتحديات التي تواجهها، وتتبعٌ لانعكاسات الفكر الغربي في المنظومة القيمية للأسرة، وتبيّنٌ لبعض التجارب والخبرات في مجال المحافظة على دور الأسرة، لا سيما بعد هيمنة النموذج المعرفي الغربي، ومحاولة طمسه للخصوصيات الثقافية والمجتمعية. حاولت بحوث هذا الكتاب أن تجيب عن تساؤلات معرفية ومجتمعية مهمة مثل: ما أهم التحديات التي تواجه الأسرة المسلمة في الراهن المعاصر وكيفية مواجهتها، وما (...) التغيرات التي طرأت على الأسرة المسلمة في ظل التطورات والتسارعات المجتمعية والاقتصادية والتقنية إلخ، وما التصوّر الإسلامي لدور الأسرة في بناء المجتمع، وما دور مؤسسات المجتمع المدني في الحد من تأثير الاستلاب الثقافي، وما الإسهام الذي قدمته حركات الإصلاح الإسلامية في مجال المحافظة على الدور المحوري للأسرة في تشكيل الشخصية الإسلامية القادرة على تفعيل النهوض الحضاري؟ وقد أسهم المشاركون في هذا العمل الجماعي، الذين بلغ عددهم واحداً وعشرين باحثاً، في محاورة هذه الأسئلة المعرفية، وفي التأسيس لمنظومة معرفية مجتمعية قادرة على الإسهام في البناء الحضاري، وفي توجيه دفة الأسرة بما ينسجم مع التوجيهات الربانية والفطرة الإنسانية. (shrink)

Research teams have made considerable progress in treating absolute uterine factor infertility through uterus transplantation, though studies have differed on the choice of either deceased or living donors. While researchers continue to analyze the medical feasibility of both approaches, little attention has been paid to the ethics of using deceased versus living donors as well as the protections that must be in place for each. Both types of uterus donation also pose unique regulatory challenges, including how to allocate donated organs; (...) whether the donor / donor's family has any rights to the uterus and resulting child; how to manage contact between the donor / donor's family, recipient, and resulting child; and how to track outcomes moving forward. (shrink)

This study aims to draw a gender based analysis of social and economic conditions of child labourers living in Karachi. Globally the issue of child labour is growing constantly and children are engaged in all sorts of hazardous forms of work, like adults, which deprives them from education, healthy life, child hood activities and balanced diet. In Pakistan the child labour is very common in all economic sectors, but it is mainly found in the informal sector and the household sector. (...) Purposive and convenience sampling techniques of non-probability sampling are used to collect data through structured questionnaire from 900 respondents from eighteen administrative districts of Karachi, which is based upon primarily quantitative and narrowly focused qualitative research methods. The findings of the study reveal that mostly children between the ages of 12 to 14 years are commonly inducted in different economic sectors. This clear violation of child rights makes them vulnerable to health and safety threats and putting them forcefully in hazardous occupations to earn bread and butter for their family by compromising their education. (shrink)

Writing the Mughal World: Studies on Culture and Politics. Muzzafar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Pp. xviii + 516. $89.50, £62 ; $29.50, £20.50.

Visual masking of primes lowers prime visibility but spares processing of primes as reflected in prime–target congruence and prime–response compatibility effects. However, the question is how to appropriately measure prime visibility. Here, we tested the influence of three procedural variables on prime visibility measures: prime–target similarity, prime–response similarity, and the variability of prime–response mappings. Our results show that a low prime–target similarity is a favorable condition for a prime visibility measure because it increases the sensitivity of this measure in comparison (...) to a high prime–target similarity. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to define some new operation laws for the trapezoidal linguistic cubic fuzzy number and Hamming distance. Furthermore, we define and use the trapezoidal linguistic cubic fuzzy TOPSIS method to solve the multi criteria decision making (MCDM) method. The new ranking method for trapezoidal linguistic cubic fuzzy numbers (TrLCFNs) are used to rank the alternatives. Finally, an illustrative example is given to verify and prove the practicality and effectiveness of the proposed method.

Believing that p, assuming that p, and imagining that p involve regarding p as true—or, as we shall call it, accepting p. What distinguishes belief from the other modes of acceptance? We claim that conceiving of an attitude as a belief, rather than an assumption or an instance of imagining, entails conceiving of it as an acceptance that is regulated for truth, while also applying to it the standard of being correct if and only if it is true. We argue (...) that the second half of this claim, according to which the concept of belief includes a standard of correctness, is required to explain the fact that the deliberative question whether to believe that p is transparent to the question whether p. This argument raises various questions. Is there such a thing as deliberating whether to believe? Is the transparency of the deliberative question whether to believe that p the same as the transparency of the factual question whether I do believe that p? We will begin by answering these questions and then turn to a series of possible objections to our argument. (shrink)

Examining the coverage of the 2016 US Presidential election of the highest circulating New Zealand newspaper—the New Zealand Herald (NZH)—this study argues that this newspaper sets agenda against Donald Trump—the Republican Party candidate in the 2016 US election. Examining all news, editorials and photographs published in NZH, it discursively argues that this newspaper overshadowed and dehumanized Trump and especially his leadership ability. The other major candidate—the Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton—was applauded in the coverage. The NZH repeatedly focused upon the (...) activities of Trump through news, views and images to dehumanize him. The repetition, therefore, does not necessarily mean that a particular media outlet favors a particular candidate. It also argues that the media outlet of a distant nation that cannot influence its reader to vote for a particular candidate may still set the agenda in favor of a candidate. (shrink)

This paper proposes two formal models for understanding real-life dialogues, aimed at capturing argumentative structures performatively enacted during conversations. In the course of the investigation, two types of discourse with a high degree of well-structured argumentation were chosen: moral debate and financial communication. The research project found itself confronted by a need to analyse, structure and formally describe large volumes of textual data, where this called for the application of computational tools. It is expected that the results of the proposed (...) research will make a contribution to formal systems modelling and the evaluation of communication from the point of view of argument soundness. (shrink)

Background: Healthcare providers who are accountable for patient care safety and quality but who are not empowered to actualize them experience moral distress. Interventions to mitigate moral distress in the healthcare organization are needed. Objective: To evaluate the effect on moral distress and clinician empowerment of an established, health-system-wide intervention, Moral Distress Consultation. Methods: A quasi-experimental, mixed methods study using pre/post surveys, structured interviews, and evaluation of consult themes was used. Consults were requested by staff when moral distress was present. (...) The purpose of consultation is to identify the causes of moral distress, barriers to action, and strategies to improve the situation. Intervention participants were those who attended a moral distress consult. Control participants were staff surveyed prior to the consult. Interviews were conducted after the consult with willing participants and unit managers. Moral distress was measured using the Moral Distress Thermometer. Empowerment was measured using the Global Empowerment Scale. Results: Twenty-one consults were conducted. Analysis included 116 intervention and 30 control surveys, and 11 interviews. A small but significant decrease was found among intervention participants, especially intensive care staff. Empowerment was unchanged. Interview themes support the consult service as an effective mode for open discussion of difficult circumstances and an important aspect of a healthy work environment. Conclusions: Moral distress consultation is an organization-wide mechanism for addressing moral distress. Consultation does not resolve moral distress but helps staff identify strategies to improve the situation. Further studies including follow up may elucidate consultation effectiveness. (shrink)

Contemporary Kantianism is often regarded as both a position within normative ethics and as an alternative to metaethical moral realism. We argue that it is not clear how contemporary Kantianism can distinguish itself from moral realism. There are many Kantian positions. For reasons of space we focus on the position of one of the most prominent, contemporary Kantians, Christine Korsgaard. Our claim is that she fails to show either that Kantianism is different or that it is better than realism. Our (...) strategy is to argue that what are supposed to be claims that conflict with realism in fact do not. (shrink)

Comparative Political Philosophy: Studies Under the Upas Tree examines four major traditions of political philosophy and discusses similarities in their key ideas and assumptions. An intellectually daring enterprise, this fascinating volume focuses on key texts from Chinese, Indian, Western and Islamic political philosophy.

Why, when asking oneself whether to believe that p, must one immediately recognize that this question is settled by, and only by, answering the question whether p is true? Truth is not an optional end for first-personal doxastic deliberation, providing an instrumental or extrinsic reason that an agent may take or leave at will. Otherwise there would be an inferential step between discovering the truth with respect to p and determining whether to believe that p, involving a bridge premise that (...) it is good (in whichever sense of good one likes, moral, prudential, aesthetic, allthings-considered, etc.) to believe the truth with respect to p. But there is no such gap between the two questions within the first-personal deliberative perspective; the question whether to believe that p seems to collapse into the question whether p is true. (shrink)

Allocating access to unapproved COVID-19 drugs available via Pre-Approval Access pathways or Emergency Use Authorization raises unique challenges at the intersection of clinical care and research....

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 17-19.