This article links three rarely considered dimensions related to the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI)-based technologies in the form of predictive policing and discusses them in relation to liberal democratic societies. The three dimensions are the theoretical embedding and the workings of AI within anomic conditions (1), potential normative disorders emerging from them in the form of thinking errors and discriminatory practices (2) as well as the consequences of these disorders on the psychosocial, and emotional level (3). Against this background, (...) AI-induced anomie is conceptualized as a field of tension that refers to a systematic deterioration of democratic norms that are supposed to create ‘normative orders’, but which, when implemented through AI-supported measures, can reproduce existing discriminations, and establish new kinds of discriminatory relations. In future, these AI-based measures have the potential to lead to opposing normative disorders by emerging in the form of false social norms to an equally false Second Nature. They deprive persons involved of the possibility of individual appropriation of social norms and the specific emotional development associated with it. (shrink)

The article argues that a critical encounter with pre-modern literatures from the national past is long overdue under the impact of a globalized discourse of sexuality. Its effects are already felt at the level of both pedagogy and literary reading, one reconstituting the other, in the ‘global classroom’, a self-conscious pedagogical space imagined by the new educational policy to bring about a globally accredited cultural homogeneity. The case study comes from teaching erotic poetry at an Indian university, from the joint (...) literary complex of Hindi and Urdu in South Asia, a theme uncomfortably located in national culture not just because of its sexuality but its association with non-national linguistic elements which the article terms ‘Indo-Islamic’. The overlapping of the sexual modern with the Indo-Islamic resurfaces a tension in the nationalized body of literary writing in Hindi/Urdu, the major ‘national’ languages of South Asia. This encounter of erotic poetry in old Hindi and Urdu with globalized sexuality, the article shows, offers a chance to reflect on how literary studies are being reshaped by the assumptions of a monolingual, monocultural global sexuality in our nationalist times. (shrink)

This research study has done to identify and investigate the major factors behind the excessive usage of Facebook by the youth of Karachi and what kind of impacts they have to face on various aspects of their lives due to this much consumption of Facebook. In this research paper, the researcher has applied both types of methodology, Qualitative as well as Quantitative. The researcher has selected Karachi as the universe of the study. The data has collected in the manner of (...) survey forms filled by students of different universities and colleges of Karachi; aged from 18 to 30 and the sample size is 50 in which half of the population includes males and half females and 10 interviews are also conducted from teachers and parents of Facebook users. This research study raises major points related to the extreme usage of Facebook which includes the mental and physical conditions of adolescents, children’s progress in their academic lives, impacts on relationships and disturbance in routine works. The data has collected in a fair way. The results revealed that Facebook repercussion only happens when an individual is using it in an excessive amount. The researcher suggests that using Facebook could be beneficial only if people learns to use it in manageable levels and if they are able to create a balance between the virtual world and real world. (shrink)

Anthropology of Consciousness, EarlyView.

The inspiration for this collective writing project began with a digital conference entitled ‘Knowledge Socialism, COVID-19 and the New Reality of Education’ held at Beijing Normal University. In this conference and through this article, multiple researchers spread across six continents have engaged in the collaborative task of outlining emerging innovations and alternative contingencies towards education, international collaboration, and digital reform in this time of global crisis. Trends associated with digital education, knowledge openness, peer production, and collective intelligence as articulated by (...) Michael A. Peters’ conception of Knowledge Socialism are given careful analysis and exploration. Some of the members of this collective endeavor to identify problems, others, begin to draw boxes around potential solutions. Overall, this article engages with real world challenges and innovations that look beyond dominant neoliberal trends in the knowledge economy to build bridges toward novel possibilities in this era of rapid digital change. (shrink)

Disclosure of health information is a sensitive matter, particularly in the context of serious illness. In conservative societies—those which predominate in the developing world—direct truth disclosure undoubtedly presents an ethical conundrum to the modern physician. The aim of this study is to explore the truth disclosure practices of physicians in Jordan, a developing country. In this descriptive, cross-sectional study, 240 physicians were initially selected by stratified random sampling. The sample was drawn from four major hospitals in Amman, Jordan. A closed-ended (...) questionnaire was distributed and completed by self-report. A total of 164 physicians completed the questionnaire. Thirty-seven physicians usually withheld the diagnosis of “serious illness” from patients, while 127 physicians usually divulged the information directly. Among the latter, 108 physicians made exceptions to their disclosure policy. Specialists were more likely to withhold health information. Non-disclosure was primarily motivated by request from the patient’s family. In twenty cases, non-disclosure was undertaken independently. In conclusion, most respondents opt to disclose the truth; however, the vast majority of these respondents make exceptions. Instances of non-disclosure are primarily motivated by sociocultural constructs. (shrink)

Stock markets accurately reflect countries’ economic health, and stock returns are tightly related to economic indices. One popular area of financial research is the factors that influence stock returns. Several investigations have frequently cited macroeconomic factors, among numerous elements. Therefore, this study focuses on the empirical analysis of the relationship between macroeconomic factors and stock market returns. When a stock market becomes increasingly volatile, it becomes susceptible to economic uncertainty news, and information on social media platforms. Thus, we incorporated a (...) new dimension of economic uncertainty news sentiment for stock return predictions. We employed the daily data ofgold index, crude oil price, interest rate, exchange rate, and stock returns for a set of countries from January 2010 to December 2020. Subsequently, to compute coefficients, we conducted a regression analysis using one of the more sophisticated approaches: single-layer neural networks and ordinary least square regression. In addition, we only computed EUNS for the period of the fiscal budget announcement for the US, Turkey, and Hong Kong. The results indicate that the gold index, interest rate, and exchange rate are highly significant and negative macroeconomic factors for all analyzed countries. These findings also indicate that EUNS is important and detrimental for projecting stock returns. (shrink)

Riassunto: La filosofia originale cinese è una sublimazione della coscienza culturale umana di base - la coscienza della vita e della riproduzione - che è l’unificazione del “Concetto di yin e yang” e del “Concetto di ciclo di vita “ in cui “lo yin e lo yang si uniscono per creare tutte le cose, e il ciclio dà una vita senza fine. La cultura originale cinese determina la visione filosofica, la visione artistica, il temperamento emotivo, la benessere psicologica e lo (...) spirito nazionale della nazione cinese. Il sistema filosofico cinese, che rappresenta l’unificazione della cosmologia, dell’epistemologia e della metodologia della nazione cinese, è un sistema filosofico completo e maturo che si è formato nella società tardo primitiva molto prima delle Dinastie Xia, Shang e Zhou. La cultura originale cinese, dalla cultura della ceramica dipinta di 7.000 anni fa fino ai giorni nostri, dalla cultura archeologica sotterranea alla cultura di massa terrestre, è un concetto ampio di belle arti, determinato da una visione filosofica dell’arte plastica di osservare gli oggetti e prendere immmagini. La cultura originale e la filosofia originale della Cina primitiva sono ancora conservate in un’eredità storica estremamente ricca e completa nella vita sociale della cultura di massa. Per questo motivo la Cina è l’unico Paese tra le civiltà antiche che non aver subito una frattura culturale. (shrink)

This study examines two stock market anomalies and provides strong evidence of the day-of-the-week effect in the Chinese A-share market during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we examined the Quality minus Junk strategy return on Monday and FridayQuality stocks mean portfolio deciles that earn higher excess returns. As historical evidences suggest that less distressed/safe stocks earn higher excess returns.. The QMJ factor is similar to the division of speculative and non-speculative stocks described by Birru. Our findings provide evidence that the QMJ (...) strategy gains negative returns on Fridays for both anomalies because the junk side is sensitive to an elevated mood and, thus, performs better than the quality side of portfolios on Friday. Our findings are also consistent with the theory of investor sentiment which asserts that investors are more optimistic when their mood is elevated, and generally individual mood is better on Friday than on other days of the week. Therefore, the speculative stocks earned higher sustainable stock returns during higher volatility in Chinese market due to COVID-19. Intrinsically, new evidence emerges on an inclined strategy to invest in speculative stocks on Fridays during the COVID-19 pandemic to gain sustainable excess returns in the Chinese A-share market. (shrink)

Xenotransplantation has great potential as an alternative to alleviate the shortage of organs for donation. However, given that the animal most suited for xenotransplantation is the pig, there are concerns that people in Muslim countries may be more hesitant to morally approve of these procedures. In this study, the moral approval of xenotransplantation was assessed in a group of 895 participants in Egypt. The results showed that religiosity itself does not predict moral approval of xenotransplantation, but religious identity does, as (...) Muslims are less likely to approve of xenotransplantation than Christians. However, the strongest predictor of moral approval of xenotransplantation was gender, with women displaying less approval. A partial mediating factor in this association was concern for animal welfare. Based on these results, some implications for public policy are discussed. (shrink)

Jaina canonical text, on the six essentials of personal ethics, constructed from the Agamic texts and allied literature in Old Gujarati and Sanskrit; with autocommentary chiefly in Old Gujarati.

This article is about the 829/1426 charitable trust deed of the Gawhar Shād Mosque and its social and economic implications. The deed was for a public-private trust : the private aspect advanced Gawhar Shād’s family interests, while the public aspect promoted the commonweal, being income for the Shiʿi shrine-complex of Imām Riżā, the Gawhar Shād Mosque, and the Sunni shrine-complex of Aḥmad-i Jām; funding for the maintenance of hydrological systems; increasing agricultural production and employment; and increasing revenues to the Timurid (...) fisc. The Persian text, an annotated translation, and a map of certain endowed blocks are included. (shrink)

Reviewer: Ramizah Wan Muhammad, Associate Professor, Departmentof Islamic Law, Ahmad Ibrahim Kulliyyah of Laws, InternationalIslamic University Malaysia. Email: [email protected].

The Internet furore over Intel’s flawed Pentium chip provides an important case study of the ethical ambiguity of internet communications and the legitimacy of certain forms of “electronic activism”. Joseph Badaracco, Jr., is John Shad Professor of Business Ethics at the Harvard Business School and his co‐author is a former Research Associate at Harvard and currently on the editorial staff of Inc. magazine.

For decades American sociologists maintained that due to the elimination of their ancestral heritage under slavery, African-American shad no ethnic culture. Social segregation was due to poverty rather than racial prejudice. Social theorist Robert Blauner contests this view. The theory that black culture is only a lower class life-style is flawed because it ignores the culture-producing effects of racism which is the basis for a distinctive African-American culture. Following Blauner, this paper argues that racism is a more complex phenomenon (...) than discrimination because it asserts a type of inferiority that is not diminished by economic participation in the dominant culture. Racism encourages recurring social separations that set limits to assimilation. This paper also draws upon the work of Davis, Hacker and Winant to demonstrate how the bipolar construction of racial identity characteristic of racial relations in the United States precludes full social assimilation. (shrink)

The Internet furore over Intel’s flawed Pentium chip provides an important case study of the ethical ambiguity of internet communications and the legitimacy of certain forms of “electronic activism”. Joseph Badaracco, Jr., is John Shad Professor of Business Ethics at the Harvard Business School and his co‐author is a former Research Associate at Harvard and currently on the editorial staff of Inc. magazine.

In moral philosophy the problem of virtue has been neglected for a long time. The renaissance of the ethics of vitrues goes back to the 60ies. It had shad light on many problematic issues of the ethic of rules, i. e. of deontologism and utilitarism, and presented itself as an alternative approach. Instead of the question "How should we act?" it focused on the question of the moral subject, i. e. on the problem of moral chracter. The paper examnies (...) some of the problems of the ethics of virtues. It deals with various definitions of the concept of virtue, as well as with the question wether it is to compete with the ethics of rules, or it is more probable today, that the two will enrich one another. The author also asks, whether the ethics of virues is still a valid ethical theory in our times. (shrink)

For decades American sociologists maintained that due to the elimination of their ancestral heritage under slavery, African-American shad no ethnic culture. Social segregation was due to poverty rather than racial prejudice. Social theorist Robert Blauner contests this view. The theory that black culture is only a lower class life-style is flawed because it ignores the culture-producing effects of racism which is the basis for a distinctive African-American culture. Following Blauner, this paper argues that racism is a more complex phenomenon (...) than discrimination because it asserts a type of inferiority that is not diminished by economic participation in the dominant culture. Racism encourages recurring social separations that set limits to assimilation. This paper also draws upon the work of Davis, Hacker and Winant to demonstrate how the bipolar construction of racial identity characteristic of racial relations in the United States precludes full social assimilation. (shrink)