The ADHD Rating Scale—5 for Children and Adolescents, School Version, has been adopted and validated to be used in assessing ADHD among school children within Western contexts. However, there are few assessment tools in use for identifying ADHD characteristics in children in Sudan. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the psychometric properties of this rating scale in the context of Sudan. To accomplish this, data were collected on a sample of 3,742 school-aged children and adolescents as reported by their teachers. (...) Psychometric properties can be classified as very good, with very high reliability, and high construct validity tested by exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Thus, the ADHD Rating Scale—5 for Children and Adolescents, School Version, is valid, reliable, and suitable to use for assessing ADHD symptoms among children and adolescents in the Sudanese context. (shrink)

English summary: Legal manuals and treatises instruct readers on positive law and the body of laws recognized in given territory, but what idea of the law and juridical norms do they present? The various collected articles in this volume address normative theories of law, variants of juridical realism, and the theory of integral law in order to rethink the normativity of the law. French description: Manuels et traites de droit nous instruisent du droit positif et de l'ensemble des lois qui (...) sont reconnues comme valides sur un territoire donne. Quelle idee du droit et de la norme juridique vehiculent-ils? La norme juridique peut-elle etre pensee independamment de toute consideration morale? Que fait exactement le juge lorsqu'il prononce le droit? Ces questions ne sauraient etre reduites a la simple opposition entre le positivisme juridique et les theories du droit naturel. Les theories normativistes du droit, les multiples variantes du realisme juridique ou la theorie du droit comme integrite ont permis de renouveler profondement la maniere de penser la normativite du droit. Ce volume presente au lecteur un ensemble de textes qui lui permettront d'en debattre et d'en juger. (shrink)

There are few examples in the literature of objective measures for the assessment of donor willingness. The author describes the scoring system in use at his own renal transplant unit which has brought objectivity to the process of determining the willingness of living related donors. In this system, a total score to determine the degree of willingness or unwillingness is calculated based on responses to a series of questions. The author believes that with minor modifications this system could be implemented (...) by transplant units in different countries and cultures to screen out donors who are acting under duress. (shrink)

Neutrosophy, the study of neutralities, is a new branch of Philosophy that has applications in many different fields of science. Inspired by the idea of Neutrosophy, Smarandache introduced NeutroAlgebraicStructures (or NeutroAlgebras) by allowing the partiality and indeterminacy to be included in the structures’ operations and/or axioms.

This article goes behind stereotypes of Muslim veiling to ask after the representational structure underlying these images. I examine the public debate leading to the 2004 French law banning conspicuous religious signs in schools and French colonial attitudes to veiling in Algeria, in conjunction with discourses on the veil that have arisen in other western contexts. My argument is that western perceptions and representations of veiled Muslim women are not simply about Muslim women themselves. Rather than representing Muslim women, these (...) images fulfill a different function: they provide the negative mirror in which western constructions of identity and gender can be positively reflected. It is by means of the projection of gender oppression onto Islam, and its naturalization to the bodies of veiled women, that such mirroring takes place. This constitutes, I argue, a form of racialization. Drawing on the work of Fanon, Merleau-Ponty and Alcoff, I offer a phenomenological analysis of this racializing vision. What is at stake is a form of cultural racism that functions in the guise of anti-sexist and feminist liberatory discourse, at once posing a dilemma to feminists and concealing its racializing logic. (shrink)

As part of a continuous process to explore the factors that might weaken or corrupt traditional peer review, in this paper, we query the ethics, fairness and validity of the request, by editors, of authors to suggest peer reviewers during the submission process. One of the reasons for the current crisis in science pertains to a loss in trust as a result of a flawed peer review which is by nature biased unless it is open peer review. As we indicate, (...) the fact that some editors and journals rely on authors’ suggestions in terms of who should peer review their paper already instills a potential way to abuse the trust of the submission and publishing system. An author-suggested peer reviewer choice might also tempt authors to seek reviewers who might be more receptive or sympathetic to the authors’ message or results, and thus favor the outcome of that paper. Authors should thus not be placed in such a potentially ethically compromising situation, especially as a mandatory condition for submission. However, the fact that they do not have an opt-out choice during the submission process—especially when using an online submission system that makes such a suggestion compulsory—may constitute a violation of authors’ rights. (shrink)

I develop a phenomenological account of racialized encounters with works of art and film, wherein the racialized viewer feels cast as perpetually past, coming “too late” to intervene in the meaning of her own representation. This points to the distinctive role that the colonial past plays in mediating and constructing our self-images. I draw on my experience of three exhibitions that take Muslims and/or Arabs as their subject matter and that ostensibly try to interrupt or subvert racialization while reproducing some (...) of its tropes. My examples are the Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2015), the exposition Welten der Muslime at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin (2011–2017), and a sculpture by Bob and Roberta Smith at the Leeds City Art Gallery, created in response to the imperial power painting, General Gordon’s Last Stand, that is housed there. My interest is in how artworks contribute to the experience of being racialized in ways that not only amplify the circulation of images but also constitute difficult temporal relations to images. Drawing on Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, I argue that such racialized images are temporally gluey, or stuck, so that we are weighted and bogged down by them. This essay received Honorable Mention from the American Society for Aesthetics Feminist Caucus Committee in the Feminist Research Essay prize in 2020. (shrink)

This paper presents a methodology to design and implement programs intended to decide cases, described as sets of factors, according to a theory of a particular domain based on a set of precedent cases relating to that domain. We useDialectical Frameworks, a recent development in AI knowledge representation, as the central feature of our design method. ADFs will play a role akin to that played by Entity–Relationship models in the design of database systems. First, we explain how the factor hierarchy (...) of the well-known legal reasoning system CATO can be used to instantiate an ADF for the domain of US Trade Secrets. This is intended to demonstrate the suitability of ADFs for expressing the design of legal cased based systems. The method is then applied to two other legal domains often used in the literature of AI and Law. In each domain, the design is provided by the domain analyst expressing the cases in terms of factors organised into an ADF from which an executable program can be implemented in a straightforward way by taking advantage of the closeness of the acceptance conditions of the ADF to components of an executable program. We evaluate the ease of implementation, the performance and efficacy of the resulting program, ease of refinement of the program and the transparency of the reasoning. This evaluation suggests ways in which factor based systems, which are limited by taking as their starting point the representation of cases as sets of factors and so abstracting away the particular facts, can be extended to address open issues in AI and Law by incorporating the case facts to improve the decision, and by considering justification and reasoning using portion of precedents. (shrink)

It is, without a doubt, a difficult task to address at once the state of philosophy as embodied by the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy and the place of one’s own thought within it. This is the task that a co-director’s address tries to fill. Whether with a critical reexamination of the phenomenological mode of seeing distinctive of SPEP, of philosophical progress, or of the place of transcontinental philosophy, prior co-directors found ways to subtly chart the windings and turns (...) of the many streams that assemble to form this society.We seem to be, however, at a different juncture, so that another... (shrink)

A new form of software piracy known as digital piracy has taken the spotlight. Lost revenues due to digital piracy could reach $5 billion by the end of 2005.Preventives and deterrents do not seem to be working – losses are increasing. This study examines factors that influence an individual’s attitude toward pirating digital material. The results of this study suggest that attitude toward digital pirating is influenced by beliefs about the outcome of behavior (cognitive beliefs), happiness and excitement (affective beliefs), (...) age, the perceived importance of the issue, the influence of significant others (subjective norms), and machiavellianism. Given these results, measures can be developed which could alter attitudes toward digital piracy. (shrink)

Behaving ethically depends on the ability to recognize that ethical issues exist, to see from an ethical point of view. This ability to see and respond ethically may be related more to attributes of corporate culture than to attributes of individual employees. Efforts to increase ethical standards and decrease pressure to behave unethically should therefore concentrate on the organization and its culture. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how total quality (TQ) techniques can facilitate the development of a (...) cooperative corporate culture that promotes and encourages ethical behavior throughout an organization. (shrink)

With an increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems, theorists have analyzed and argued for the promotion of trust in AI and trustworthy AI. Critics have objected that AI does not have the characteristics to be an appropriate subject for trust. However, this argumentation is open to counterarguments. Firstly, rejecting trust in AI denies the trust attitudes that some people experience. Secondly, we can trust other non‐human entities, such as animals and institutions, so why can we not trust AI systems? (...) Finally, human–AI trust is criticized based on a conception of human–human trust, which does not recognize the distinctiveness of the human–AI relationship. This article aims to refute these counterarguments based on the genealogical analyses of ‘trust’ and ‘trustworthiness’ of Karen Jones and Thomas Simpson, who show that trust and trustworthiness help to overcome vulnerabilities. This function of trust gives reason to use human–human trust as a standard. For this function, it is important that trustees are responsive to trust. While animals and institutions could be responsive, narrow AI systems are unable to be responsive to trust. Therefore, we should not apply trust to AI and instead direct our trust to those who can be responsive to and held responsible for our trust. (shrink)

The article deals with the main ideas of the political philosophy of Abu Abdallah Ibn al-Azraq al-Garnati (1427-1491), a well-known Muslim statesman, supreme judge of Granada, lawyer, diplomat, supporter of Arab Muslim peripatetism, a student of the outstanding thinker of the Muslim Middle Ages Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406). In the history of the political philosophy of the Muslim East, a number of major transformations in the development of the Arab Caliphate from the Medina state of the prophet to the Sultanate in (...) the Abbasid period should be noted, which were reflected in the development of the theory of the Arab-Muslim state (caliphate). The main problem of the theory of the caliphate was connected with the question of the relationship between power and authority in the context of the moral foundations of the state. The creative heritage of Ibn al-Azraq is mainly known for his work in the genre of adab ("mirrors of princes") “Miracles on the way, or the Nature of dominion”. The treatise became a classic of the political philosophy of the Muslim Middle Ages, in which, under the influence of Aristotelian ideas, a special place was given to the moral foundations of power and the state, that is, ethics was considered as a political science. In the form of instructive parables, the rulers and heirs to the throne were explained the basics of state administration as part of their studies and education. His doctrine of the virtues can be viewed as ethical rationalism with a belief in the moral perfection of people in power and subjects of the state. Since morals are largely acquired and a person can control them, the task of purifying his own morals and curing them is entrusted to him. In addition, accordingly, it is possible and necessary to cultivate virtues in rulers, since the well-being of the state and the ummah depends on their morals. The moral foundations of power determine the strength of political authority. (shrink)

Aims To examine the understanding of the ethical dilemmas associated with Big Data and artificial intelligence (AI) among Jordanian medical students, physicians in training, and senior practitioners. Methods We implemented a literature-validated questionnaire to examine the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of the target population during the period between April and August 2023. Themes of ethical debate included privacy breaches, consent, ownership, augmented biases, epistemology, and accountability. Participants’ responses were showcased using descriptive statistics and compared between groups using t-test or ANOVA. (...) Results We included 466 participants. The greater majority of respondents were interns and residents (50.2%), followed by medical students (38.0%). Most participants were affiliated with university institutions (62.4%). In terms of privacy, participants acknowledged that Big Data and AI were susceptible to privacy breaches (39.3%); however, 59.0% found such breaches justifiable under certain conditions. For ethical debacles involving informed consent, 41.6% and 44.6% were aware that obtaining informed consent posed an ethical limitation in Big Data and AI applications and denounced the concept of “broad consent”, respectively. In terms of ownership, 49.6% acknowledged that data cannot be owned yet accepted that institutions could hold a quasi-control of such data (59.0%). Less than 50% of participants were aware of Big Data and AI’s abilities to augment or create new biases in healthcare. Furthermore, participants agreed that researchers, institutions, and legislative bodies were responsible for ensuring the ethical implementation of Big Data and AI. Finally, while demonstrating limited experience with using such technology, participants generally had positive views of the role of Big Data and AI in complementing healthcare. Conclusion Jordanian medical students, physicians in training and senior practitioners have limited awareness of the ethical risks associated with Big Data and AI. Institutions are responsible for raising awareness, especially with the upsurge of such technology. (shrink)

Through the philosophies of Bergson and Deleuze, my paper explores a different theory of time. I reconstitute Deleuze’s paradoxes of the past in Difference and Repetition and Bergsonism to reveal a theory of time in which the relation between past and present is one of coexistence rather than succession. The theory of memory implied here is a non-representational one. To elaborate this theory, I ask: what is the role of the “virtual image” in Bergson’s Matter and Memory? Far from representing (...) the simple afterimage of a present perception, the “virtual image” carries multiple senses. Contracting the immediate past for the present, or expanding virtually to hold the whole of memory (and even the whole of the universe), the virtual image can form a bridge between the present and the non-representational past. This non-representational account of memory sheds light not only on the structure of time for Bergson, but also on his concepts of pure memory and virtuality. The rereading of memory also opens the way for Bergsonian intuition to play an intersubjective role; intuition becomes a means for navigating the resonances and dissonances that can be felt between different rhythms of becoming or planes of memory, which constitute different subjects. (shrink)

I argue that the temporality of colonialism is a disabling duration. To elaborate, I focus on a site in Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks where disability/debility and racism intertwine – Fanon’s refusal of “amputation” in his experience of cinema. While such disability metaphors have been problematized as ableist, I argue that amputation is more than a metaphor of lack. It extends what racializing debilitation means and makes tangible the prosthetics that colonialism imposes and the phantoms and affects of colonized (...) life that it attempts to sever. Engaging with disability studies, especially Black and anticolonial theories, I articulate racism and (dis)ability as more than parallel or analogy and conceptualize a debilitating colonial duration, as instanced in our pandemic time. By reconfiguring the possibilities foreclosed through colonialism, I ask what routes there may be to make colonial duration hesitate and destabilize its inevitability, while dwelling with its wounds and ruptures. (shrink)

This paper asks how perception becomes racializing and seeks the means for its critical interruption. My aim is not only to understand the recalcitrant and limitative temporal structure of racializing habits of seeing, but also to uncover the possibilities within perception for a critical awareness and destabilization of this structure. Reading Henri Bergson and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in dialogue with Frantz Fanon, Iris Marion Young and race-critical feminism, I locate in hesitation the phenomenological moment where habits of seeing can be internally (...) fractured. Hesitation, I claim, makes visible the exclusionary logic of racializing and objectifying perception, countering its affective closure and opening it to critical transformation. (shrink)

This paper suggests that time could have a much richer mathematical structure than that of the real numbers. Clark & Read (1984) argue that a hypertask (uncountably many tasks done in a finite length of time) cannot be performed. Assuming that time takes values in the real numbers, we give a trivial proof of this. If we instead take the surreal numbers as a model of time, then not only are hypertasks possible but so is an ultratask (a sequence which (...) includes one task done for each ordinal number—thus a proper class of them). We argue that the surreal numbers are in some respects a better model of the temporal continuum than the real numbers as defined in mainstream mathematics, and that surreal time and hypertasks are mathematically possible. (shrink)

In this paper an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model was used to help cars dealers recognize the many characteristics of cars, including manufacturers, their location and classification of cars according to several categories including: Buying, Maint, Doors, Persons, Lug_boot, Safety, and Overall. ANN was used in forecasting car acceptability. The results showed that ANN model was able to predict the car acceptability with 99.12 %. The factor of Safety has the most influence on car acceptability evaluation. Comparative study method is (...) suitable for the evaluation of car acceptability forecasting, can also be extended to all other areas. (shrink)

Background The number of coauthors in the medical literature has increased over the past 50 years as authorship continues to have important academic, social and financial implications.Aim and method The study aim was to determine the prevalence of honorary authorship in biomedical publications and identify the factors that lead to its existence. An email with a survey link was sent anonymously to 9283 corresponding authors of PubMed articles published within 1 year of contact.Results A completed survey was obtained from 1246 (...) corresponding authors, a response rate of 15.75%. One-third admitted that they had added authors who did not deserve authorship credit. Origin of the study from Europe and Asia , study type as case report/case series and increasing number of coauthors were found to be the associated factors on multivariate analysis. Journal impact factor was also found to be associated with honorary authorship for those who self-reported honorary authorship and 5.60 for those who did not report unjust authorship, p=0.05). In retrospect, 75% of the authors indicated that they would remove unjustified names from the authorship list. Reasons for adding honorary authors were complimentary , to avoid conflict at work , to facilitate article acceptance , and other .Conclusions Honorary authorship is relatively common in biomedical publications. Researchers should comply with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ criteria for authorship. (shrink)

The paper interrogates the status, nature and significance of epistemological relativism as a key element of constructionism and critical realism. It finds that epistemological relativism is espoused by authorities in critical realism and marginalized or displaced in the field of management and organization studies, resulting in forms of analysis that are empirically, but not fully critically, realist. This evaluation prompts reflection on the question of whether, how and with what implications epistemological relativism might be recast at the heart of critical (...) realist studies of management and organization. (shrink)

Companies are expected to monitor sustainable behaviour to help improve performance, enhance reputation and increase chances of survival. This paper examines the relationship between sustainability committees and independent external assurance on the inclusion of sustainability-related targets in CEO compensation contracts. Using a sample of UK FTSE350 companies for 2011–2015 and controlling for governance and firm characteristics, we find both board-level sustainability committees and sustainability reporting assurance have a positive and significant association with the inclusion of sustainability terms in compensation contracts. (...) However, there is no joint impact between the voluntary use of independent external assurance and the role of sustainability committees on CEO compensation contracts. Sustainability-related terms in compensation contracts are more likely to be included, and higher compensation is likely to be paid, when assurance is provided by a Big4 firm and when a company operates in a sustainability-sensitive industry. Our findings highlight the potential of assured sustainability reports in assessing CEO performance in sustainability-related tasks, especially when sustainability metrics are included in CEO compensation contracts. Overall, our results suggest companies that invest in voluntary assurance are more likely to monitor management’s behaviour and be concerned about the achievement of sustainability goals. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty's reference to "a past which has never been present" at the end of "Le sentir" challenges the typical framework of the Phenomenology of Perception, with its primacy of perception and bodily field of presence. In light of this "original past," I propose a re-reading of the prepersonal as ground of perception that precedes the dichotomies of subject-object and activity-passivity. Merleau-Ponty searches in the Phenomenology for language to describe this ground, borrowing from multiple registers (notably Bergson, but also Husserl). This (...) "sensory life" is a coexistence of sensing and sensible—bodily and worldly—rhythms. Perception is, then, not a natural given, but a temporal process of synchronization between rhythms. By drawing on Bergson, this can be described as a process in which virtual life is actualized into perceiving subject and object perceived. Significantly, this process involves non-coincidence or delay whereby sensory life is always already past for perception. (shrink)

Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s “Eye and Mind” and Bergson’s Matière et mémoire and “La perception du changement,” I ask what resources are available in vision for interrupting objectifying habits of seeing. While both Bergson and Merleau-Ponty locate the possibility of seeing differently in the figure of the painter, I develop by means of their texts, and in dialogue with Iris Marion Young’s work, a more general phenomenology of hesitation that grounds what I am calling “critical-ethical vision.” Hesitation, I argue, stems from (...) affect and leads to critical memory. In hesitation, the seeming coincidence between my habits of seeing and the visible is decentered, revealing these habits and their social reference as the constitutive horizon of my field of vision. Hesitation, then, provides the phenomenological moment within which vision may become at once critically watchful, destabilizing its objectifying habits, and ethically responsive, recollecting its affective grounds. The critical and the ethical are here inseparable. Critically, this vision is an awareness of the structures of invisibility, diacritical and habitual, social and historical, to which my vision owes—dimensions which institute particular ways of seeing and being as norm while eliding others. Ethically, this is the recognition of how seeing is already seeing with others—others whose affective influence is operative within vision, even as their existence is reductively represented or denied. (shrink)

The third of Berman and Hafner’s early nineties papers on reasoning with legal cases concerned temporal context, in particular the evolution of case law doctrine over time in response to new cases and against a changing background of social values and purposes. In this paper we consider the ways in which changes in case law doctrine can be accommodated in a recently proposed methodology for encapsulating case law theories, and relate these changes the sources of change identified by Berman and (...) Hafner. (shrink)

In The Mysteries of Purification (Kitab asrar al tahara), the third of the forty books of the Revival of the Religious Sciences (Ihya' 'ulum al-din), Abu Hamid al-Ghazali explains the fundamentals of the purification that is necessary in order to perform the five daily prayers. The book begins with an introduction to the general topic of purity. Al-Ghazali explains the hadith "Purification is half of faith," and reminds readers that, for the earliest Muslims, inner purification was much more important than (...) outer purification. In chapter 1, he considers purification from impurities: What are the impurities and how should they be removed? Over the following chapters, al-Ghazali examines the lesser ablution (wudu), the greater ablution (ghusl), and the "dry ablution" (ablution without water, or tayammum). He discusses the etiquette of the bathhouse and outlines exactly how to clean the body of external things and natural growths; finally, he discusses the beard and practices related to it. (shrink)

BackgroundA different ethos with respect to the perception of medical ethics prevails in societies in transition such as those in the Arabian Peninsula, which makes it difficult to apply international principles of bioethics in medical practice. This study aimed to develop and psychometrically test an instrument that measures physicians’ awareness of bioethics and medical law and their attitudes towards the practice of medical ethics. Additionally, it examined physician correlates influencing the awareness of bioethics.MethodsFollowing a rigorous review of relevant literature by (...) a panel of experts, a 13-item instrument, the Omani physicians’ bioethics and medical law awareness (OBMLA) questionnaire was developed with the aim of assessing physicians’ awareness of bioethics and medical law. The study tool’s construct validity and internal consistency reliability were examined by exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and Cronbach’s alpha. In a cross-sectional study, the questionnaire was distributed among a random sample of 200 physicians at a tertiary hospital in Muscat, Oman. Participant characteristics that may influence awareness of bioethics and medical law were explored.ResultsThe EFA of the OBMLA questionnaire resulted in three well-loading factors: (1) Physicians’ bioethics practice subscale (2) incentive related bioethics subscale and (3) medical law awareness subscale. Internal consistency reliability ranged between Cronbach’s α: 0.73–0.8. Of the total 200 participants, 52% reported that teaching medical ethics during medical school was inadequate. The overall mean (standard deviation, SD) of the bioethics awareness score and Omani medical law awareness were 27.6 (3.5) and 10.1 (2.1) respectively. The majority of physicians (73%) reported that they frequently encountered ethical dilemmas in their practice and 24.5% endorsed the view that unethical decisions tended to occur in their practice.ConclusionThe study provides an insight into the practice of bioethics, and the awareness of bioethics and medical law among physicians in a teaching hospital in Oman. The OBMLA questionnaire appears to be a valid and reliable tool to assess a physician’s awareness of bioethics and medical law. In this preliminary study, it appears that participants have suboptimal scores on the indices which measure practice and awareness of bioethics and medical law. (shrink)

The article addresses the gendered implications of Covid-19 in the Global South by paying attention to the intersectional pre-existing inequalities that have given rise to specific risks and vulnerabilities. It explores various aspects of the pandemic-induced ‘crisis of social reproduction’ that affects women as the main caregivers as well as addressing the drastic increase of various forms of gender-based violence. Both, in addition to growing poverty and severely limited access to resources and health services, are particularly devastating in marginalized and (...) vulnerable communities in the Global South. The article looks at specific regions and countries to illustrate wider challenges faced by LGBTQ populations, ethnic minorities, domestic workers, migrants and sex workers. Against the background of these gendered intersectional challenges, the article then moves to discuss feminist initiatives and mobilizations to deal with the crisis in specific local contexts as well as nationally, regionally and transnationally. It concludes by highlighting a number of visions, tensions and dilemmas faced by feminists in the Global South that will need to be taken into consideration in terms of transnational feminist solidarities. (shrink)

Ethical scandals, as well as unethical behaviour, are becoming major concerns in recent times. Thus, this study focused on the role of ethical climate and employees’ moral identity. Specifically, this study examined the mediation effect of ethical climate on the relationship between ethical leadership and employees’ ethical behaviour. Also, the study investigated the moderating role of employee moral identity on the relationship between ethical climate and employees’ ethical behaviour. Data were collected from 620 full-time employees working at thirty-three Iraqi organisations (...) from five Iraqi provinces. These organisations were from various industry sectors such as manufacturing, retailing, medical, insurance, information technology, legal, finance, and telecommunication sectors. The study found that ethical leadership impacted on the ethical behaviour of employees and the ethical climate also significantly mediated the relationship between ethical leadership and employees’ ethical behaviour. The moderating role of moral identity on the relationship between ethical climate and ethical behaviour was found to be insignificant in this context. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study the ethical behaviour of Muslim IT professionals in an attempt to stop many unethical practices such as software piracy, software intellectual property violations and general software development.Design/methodology/approachThis study examines the computer ethical principles presented in the Association for Computing Machinery code of conduct from an Islamic point of view through studying some relevant verses of The Holy Quran and Hadiths of Prophet Mohammed. An evaluation of the benefits of this newly proposed Islamic (...) computer code of ethics is presented by surveying how IT students, IT professionals and software house owners would adhere to it. The evaluation was carried out by teaching different groups of participants aspects of the ACM code of conduct and the proposed Islamic computer ethics code and then surveying their opinions by a questionnaire.FindingsThe study demonstrates that teaching computer ethics in general, and computer ethics from an Islamic point of view in particular, clearly contributes to ethical behaviour of Muslim IT professionals with regards to software development issues.Research limitations/implicationsIt is not possible to put participants through real life scenarios and practically observe how they would react to different ethical situations. The empirical research thus relies on what participants said they would do.Practical implicationsThe newly developed Islamic code of computer ethics and its proposed implementation method can be utilised by organisations for their benefit.Originality/valueThe study is the first to address the issue of computer ethics and Islam for IT professionals. This paper presents a first Islamic computer code of ethics and presents a methodology for applying it. It also reports a study undertaken in Bahrain of how attitudes might be influenced by teaching computer ethics in general, and computer ethics from an Islamic point of view in particular. (shrink)

In Islam, the acquisition of knowledge is a form of worship. But human achievement must be exercised in conformity with God's will. Warnings against feelings of superiority often are coupled with the command to remain within the confines of God's laws and limits. Because of the fear of arrogance and disregard of the balance created by God, any new knowledge or discovery must be applied with careful consideration to maintaining balance in the creation. Knowledge must be applied to ascertain equity (...) and justice for all of humanity. Research in Islam must be linked to the broad ethical base set forth in the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Whether embryonic stem cell research or cloning is ethically acceptable in Islam depends on the benefits derived from such applications. What is most important for the scholars is to adhere to the concepts of compassion, mercy, and benefit to everyone. (shrink)

Despite a proliferation of research on Islam and Muslims in the media, very little work has focused on Muslim women, a much-debated social group that merits special consideration. This article aims to investigate how Muslim women are represented in BBC News website texts using a purpose-built corpus. The research employs analytical tools from the discourse-historical, socio-cognitive, and sociosemantic approaches to critical discourse studies. These are combined with corpus-based methodologies to investigate the semantic macrostructures that tend to be associated with Muslim (...) women and the discursive strategies employed in the representation of the hijab. The study is novel in its exhaustive approach to identifying salient and underreported issues related to Muslim women in news discourse. It also introduces a more integrated analysis that combines manual and automated techniques and tackles the quantification of qualitative results where possible. Findings suggest that Muslim women’s representations are largely restricted in terms of regional coverage. Semantic macrostructures related to conflict and crime are prevalent. The hijab remains a nodal discourse surrounding Muslim women whose function as a descriptive feature is often unclear, raising serious questions about its relevance. A number of recommendations are made for journalists to become cognizant of their own context models when reporting on Muslim women. (shrink)

To discover affects within Husserl’s texts designates a difficult investigation; it points to a theme of which these texts were forced to speak, even as they were explicitly speaking of regional ontologies and the foundations of sciences. For we may at first wonder: where can affection find a positive role in the rigor of a pure philosophy that seeks to account for its phenomena from within the immanence of consciousness? Does this not mean that the very passivity and foreignness of (...) affect will be overlooked; will it not be continually linked to a Vorstellung that issues as a ray of the pure ego? That is, will the phenomenological account of affect be reduced to the cognition of an object, as Emmanuel Levinas suggests? Yet there are affects in Husserl’s texts that maintain their autonomy and resist subsumption to an objectivating intentionality.We may see this in the Lectures On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time: in the longitudinal intentionality of retention, through which consciousness becomes aware of its elapsed phases without making them into objects—a passive synthesis that gives the flow of time-constituting consciousness the form of a continually deferred auto-affection.1We find it again as early as the fifth Logical Investigation, 2 providing us with the impetus to radicalize Husserlian phenomenology. (shrink)

Post-human technologies, such as human enhancements and artificial intelligence, blur or displace the boundaries of our common humanity. While these technologies enhance many valuable human powers, there is limited philosophical discussion as to whether and how they can also be dehumanizing? To answer this question, I start from a philosophical discussion of the concept of ‘dehumanization' and argue that it conflates three social mechanisms through which (i) human flourishing is impeded; (ii) subalterns are degraded; and (iii) automated processes replace typically (...) human activities. Furthermore, I argue in realist fashion that we should consider both the natural powers harnessed by post-human technologies and the social contexts through which the latter are designed, produced, marketed and consumed. I then illustrate my thinking with three recent inquiries that I conducted on post-human technologies’ dehumanizing potential. All three inquiries happen in the contemporary neo-liberal context, but each one foregrounds a distinct mechanism of dehumanization. (shrink)

As international trade and business opportunities grow globally, insight into trading partners’ strategies is essential. One of the major strategies that impact trading partners’ relationships is negotiation strategy employed by each partner. These strategies assume even greater importance when these strategies have ethical content. This study examines the effects of marketing executives’ preferred ethical ideologies, opportunism and Machiavellianism on their perceived appropriateness of unethical negotiation tactics. Utilizing a sample of 995 marketing executives from six countries, cluster analysis and multivariate analysis (...) of variance revealed two types of marketing negotiators: principled and corrupt negotiators. Corrupt negotiators tend to be more Machiavellian, more relativist, more opportunistic and less idealistic than their principled counterparts. Principled negotiators tend to perceive unethical negotiation tactics less favorably than their corrupt counterparts. Implications of these results for practitioners and directions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

Genetic research presents ethical challenges to the achievement of valid informed consent, especially in developing countries with areas of low literacy. During the last several years, a number of genetic research proposals involving Omani nationals were submitted to the Department of Research and Studies, Ministry of Health, Oman.The objective of this paper is to report on the results of an internal quality assurance initiative to determine the extent of the information being provided in genetic research informed consent forms. In order (...) to achieve this, we developed checklists to assess the inclusion of basic elements of informed consent as well as elements related to the collection and future storage of biological samples. Three of the authors independently evaluated and reached consensus on seven informed consent forms that were available for review.Of the seven consent forms, four had less than half of the basic elements of informed consent. None contained any information regarding whether genetic information relevant to health would be disclosed, whether participants may share in commercial products, the extent of confidentiality protections, and the inclusion of additional consent forms for future storage and use of tissue samples. Information regarding genetic risks and withdrawal of samples were rarely mentioned (1/7), whereas limits on future use of samples were mentioned in 3 of 7 consent forms.Ultimately, consent forms are not likely to address key issues regarding genetic research that have been recommended by research ethics guidelines. We recommend enhanced educational efforts to increase awareness, on the part of researchers, of information that should be included in consent forms. (shrink)

The editors of scholarly journals have a duty to uphold and promote the highest standards of ethical conduct of research. They also have a responsibility to maintain the integrity of the literature, and to promote transparency and honesty in reporting research findings. In the process of screening manuscripts they receive for possible publication, editors have the obligation to report infractions to the institutions of offending authors, and request an investigation. Since editors can reject a paper on ethical grounds, they can (...) be considered to be the guardians of ethics who should express high ethical standards in conducting and publishing their own research. An examination of several publishers’ websites reveals no such requirement or clear selection criteria for journal editors. Therefore, we aim to discuss the factors that publishers, in a broad sense, should consider when selecting editors for scholarly journals and believe that such criteria should be made public to ensure accountability. This would restore some of the eroding public trust in disseminated research, fortify confidence in the composition and qualification of members of an editorial board, and help to protect the reputations of publishers and editors. (shrink)

This article critiques some Islamic approaches to food ethics and the debate over genetically modified food. Food ethics is a branch of bioethics, and is an emerging field in Islamic bioethics. The article critically analyzes the arguments of the authors who wrote in favor of genetically modified organisms from an Islamic perspective, and those who wrote against GMOs, also from an Islamic perspective. It reveals the theological and the epistemological foundations of the two main approaches. Moreover, it provides an attempt (...) to critique what is perceived as an exclusivist and legalistic trend adopted by some authors. It argues that an alternative approach that acknowledges the priority of reason in ethics and is at the same time rooted in Islamic tradition would be more inclusive and constructive. (shrink)

Authors endure considerable hardship carrying out biomedical research, from generating ideas to completing their manuscripts and submitting their findings and data to a journal. When researchers submit to journals, they entrust their findings and ideas to editors and peer reviewers who are expected to respect the confidentiality of peer review. Inherent trust in peer review is built on the ethical conduct of authors, editors and reviewers, and on the respect of this confidentiality. If such confidentiality is breached by unethical reviewers (...) who might steal or plagiarize the authors’ ideas, researchers will lose trust in peer review and may resist submitting their findings to that journal. Science loses as a result, scientific and medical advances slow down, knowledge may become scarce, and it is unlikely that increasing bias in the literature will be detected or eliminated. In such a climate, society will ultimately be deprived from scientific and medical advances. Despite a rise in documented cases of abused peer review, there is still a relative lack of qualitative and quantitative studies on reviewer-related misconduct, most likely because evidence is difficult to come by. Our paper presents an assessment of editors’ and reviewers’ responsibilities in preserving the confidentiality of manuscripts during the peer review process, in response to a 2016 case of intellectual property theft by a reviewer. Our main objectives are to propose additional measures that would offer protection of authors’ intellectual ideas from predatory reviewers, and increase researchers’ awareness of the responsible reviewing of journal articles and reporting of biomedical research. (shrink)

Abstract.In Islam, the acquisition of knowledge is a form of worship. But human achievement must be exercised in conformity with God's will. Warnings against feelings of superiority often are coupled with the command to remain within the confines of God's laws and limits. Because of the fear of arrogance and disregard of the balance created by God, any new knowledge or discovery must be applied with careful consideration to maintaining balance in the creation. Knowledge must be applied to ascertain equity (...) and justice for all of humanity. Research in Islam must be linked to the broad ethical base set forth in the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Whether embryonic stem cell research or cloning is ethically acceptable in Islam depends on the benefits derived from such applications. What is most important for the scholars is to adhere to the concepts of compassion, mercy, and benefit to everyone. (shrink)

The study investigates the effect of board characteristics and firm performance on disclosure tones by considering DICTION five master variables namely activity, optimism, certainty, realism and commonality tones using a sample of 779 annual reports of GCC listed firms (2012 to 2018). Disclosure tones of the sampled GCC firms were measured through corporate narrative disclosures by DICTION 7.0 software. Then, the ordinary least square regression analysis was conducted. The main findings of the study show that firm performance has a significant (...) effect on disclosure tones in terms of activity, optimism, certainty, and realism tones except for commonality reported tone. Board characteristics have different effects on the five disclosure tones. The study offers a unique contribution to accounting literature as it is one of the first studies in the Gulf region that seeks to examine the relationship between disclosure tones and firm performance as well as board governance. (shrink)

Lately in the past couple of years, there are an increasing in the normal rate of playing computer games or video games compared to the E-learning content that are introduced for the safety of our children, and the impact of the video game addictiveness that ranges from (Musculoskeletal issues, Vision problems and Obesity). Furthermore, this paper introduce an intelligent tutoring system for both parent and their children for enhancement the experience of gaming and tell us about the health problems and (...) how we can solve them, with an easy user interface that way can our children be happy and excited about the information and their health. (shrink)

BackgroundConsenting for retrospective medical records-based research (MR) and leftover tissue-based research (TR) continues to be controversial. Our objective was to survey Saudis attending outpatient clinics at a tertiary care hospital on their personal preference and perceptions of norm and current practice in relation to consenting for MR and TR.MethodsWe surveyed 528 Saudis attending clinics at a tertiary care hospital in Saudi Arabia to explore their preferences and perceptions of norm and current practice. The respondents selected one of 7 options from (...) each of 6 questionnaires.ResultsRespondents' mean (SD) age was 33 (11) years, 42% were males, 56% were patients, 84% had ≥ secondary school education, and 10% had previously volunteered for research. Respectively, 40% and 49% perceived that the norm is to conduct MR and TR without consent and 38% and 37% with general or proposal-specific consent; the rest objected to such research. There was significant difference in the distribution of choices according to health status (patients vs. companions) for MR (adjusted Kruskal-Wallis test P = 0.03) but not to age group, gender, education level, or previous participation in research (unadjusted P = 0.02 - 0.59). The distributions of perceptions of current practice and norm were similar (unadjusted Marginal Homogeneity test P = 0.44 for MR and P = 0.89 for TR), whereas the distributions of preferences and perceptions of norm were different (adjusted P = 0.09 for MR and P = 0.02 for TR). The distributions of perceptions of norm, preferences, and perceptions of current practice for MR were significantly different from those of TR (adjusted P < 0.009 for all).ConclusionsWe conclude that: 1) there is a considerable diversity among Saudi views regarding consenting for retrospective research which may be related to health status, 2) the distribution of perceptions of norm was similar to the distribution of perceptions of current practice but different from that of preferences, and 3) MR and TR are perceived differently in regard to consenting. (shrink)

Advocates of political liberalism hold it as a superior alternative to perfectionism on the grounds that it avoids superfluous and/or controversial claims in favor of a maximally-inclusive approach undergirded by a "free-standing" justification for the ideology. These assertions prove difficult to defend: political interpretations of liberalism tend to be implicitly ethnocentric; they often rely upon a number of controversial, and even empirically falsified, assumptions about rationality--and in many ways prove more parochial than their perfectionist cousins. It is possible to reform (...) political liberalism to address these challenges, but generally at the expense of the supposed normative force and universality of the liberal project. However, this para-liberal approach is much better in keeping with contemporary findings in sociology, psychology and cognitive science--and can much more effectively accommodate the illiberal challenge. (shrink)

Bipolar soft set is formulated by two soft sets; one of them provides us the positive information and the other provides us the negative information. The philosophy of bipolarity is that human judgment is based on two sides, positive and negative, and we choose the one which is stronger. In this paper, we introduce novel belong and nonbelong relations between a bipolar soft set and an ordinary point. These relations are considered as one of the unique characteristics of bipolar soft (...) sets which are somewhat expression of the degrees of membership and nonmembership of an element. We discuss essential properties and derive the sufficient conditions of some equivalence of these relations. We also define the concept of soft mappings between two classes of bipolar soft sets and study the behaviors of an ordinary point under these soft mappings with respect to all relations introduced herein. Then, we apply bipolar soft sets to build an optimal choice application. We give an algorithm of this application and show the method for implementing this algorithm by an illustrative example. In conclusion, it can be noted that the relations defined herein give another viewpoint to explore the concepts of bipolar soft topology, in particular, soft separation axioms and soft covers. (shrink)

Get the science facts, not science fiction, on the cutting-edge developments that are already changing the course of our future. Every day, scientists conduct pioneering experiments with the potential to transform how we live. Yet it isn’t every day you hear from the scientists themselves! Now, award–winning author Jim Al–Khalili and his team of top-notch experts explain how today’s earthshaking discoveries will shape our world tomorrow—and beyond. Pull back the curtain on: genomics robotics AI the “Internet of Things” synthetic biology (...) transhumanism interstellar travel colonization of the solar system teleportation and much more And find insight into big–picture questions such as: Will we find a cure to all diseases? The answer to climate change? And will bionics one day turn us into superheroes? The scientists in these pages are interested only in the truth—reality-based and speculation-free. The future they conjure is by turns tantalizing and sobering: There’s plenty to look forward to, but also plenty to dread. And undoubtedly the best way to for us to face tomorrow’s greatest challenges is to learn what the future looks like—today. Praise for What the Future Looks Like “A collection of mind-boggling essays that are just the thing for firing up your brain cells.” —Saga Magazine “The predictions and impacts are global... [and] the book contains far more fascinating information than can be covered in this review.” —Choice “This book is filled with essays from experts offering their informed opinions on what the science and technology of today will look like in the future, from smart materials to artificial intelligence to genetic editing.” —Popular Science “Fun is an understatement. This is a great collection to get the summer book season started.” —Forbes.com “The focus on sincere, factual presentation of current and future possibilities by leading experts is particularly welcome in this era of fake news and anti-science rhetoric.” —Library Journal. (shrink)

This study provides a critical discourse analysis of letters of complaint by Jordanian university students. It aims to investigate the rhetorical pattern in these letters and explore the main strategies students use to express their dissatisfaction about certain issues and persuade the addressee to take action. To this end, permissions were obtained to collect data from two universities in Jordan: Jordan University of Science and Technology and World University of Islamic Studies and Education. The data were analyzed both qualitatively and (...) quantitatively through two analytic frameworks within critical discourse analysis : genre analysis to investigate the rhetorical pattern of complaint letters, and discursive analysis to investigate the main strategies of persuasion. These strategies were then categorized according to Aristotle’s means of persuasion: ‘ethos’, ‘logos’ and ‘pathos’. The analysis showed that written complaint was a distinctive genre with distinctive moves. It also revealed that persuasion by means of pathos was more prevalent than the other two types. Socio-cultural values have been shown to be so powerful in Jordanian society even in neutral situations such as academic context. This study will hopefully contribute to the fields of genre analysis and CDA in cross-cultural communication. (shrink)

Being the largest Muslim country in the world, the conversation of Islam in Indonesian social media has grown to the distinctive opposite poles of belief among the Islamic communities. This study presents the discussions of theological selections among the application users, as evident from their contesting schools of thought. This study identifies the data by content analysis. It presents the information with the digital ethnography design by analyzing and interpreting data from online sources to identify themes, patterns, and trends. The (...) results show that social media greatly influences socio-religious development as religious organizations have responded to their participation in social media. The community then experienced social changes that prioritized relevant options in understanding religion according to their natural or developed preference, thus potentially creating an echo chamber. Some towering figures rise by the mobs with different proposals and will color the selection of Islamic ideology and views now and then. (shrink)