Online research in philosophy

Differences That Matter challenges existing ways of theorising the relationship between feminism and postmodernism which ask 'is or should feminism be modern or postmodern?' Sara Ahmed suggests that postmodernism has been allowed to dictate feminist debates and calls instead for feminist theorists to speak (back) to postmodernism, rather than simply speak on (their relationship to) it. Such a 'speaking back' involves a refusal to position postmodernism as a generalisable condition of the world and requires closer readings of what postmodernism (...) is actually 'doing' in a variety of disciplinary contexts. Sara Ahmed hence examines constructions of postmodernism in relation to rights, ethics, subjectivity, authorship, meta-fiction and film. (shrink)

Causal Decision Theory (CDT) cares only about the effects of a contemplated act, not its causes. The paper constructs a case in which CDT consequently recommends a bet that the agent is certain to lose, rather than a bet that she is certain to win. CDT is plainly giving wrong advice in this case. It therefore stands refuted.

has offered evidential decision theorists a defence against the charge that they make unintuitive recommendations for cases like Newcomb's Problem. He says that when conditional probabilities are assessed from the agent's point of view, evidential decision theory makes the same recommendation as intuition. I argue that calculating the probabilities in Price's way leads to no recommendation. It condemns the agent to perpetual oscillation between different options. Price's Argument Instability Objections Conclusion.

(No abstract is available for this citation).

Published in 1953, Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations had a deeply unsettling effect upon our most basic philosophical ideas concerning thought, sensation, and language. Its claim that philosophical questions of meaning necessitate a close analysis of the way we use language continues to influence Anglo-American philosophy today. However, its compressed and dialogic prose is not always easy to follow. This collection of essays deepens but also challenges our understanding of the work's major themes, such as the connection between meaning and use, the (...) nature of concepts, thought and intentionality, and language games. Bringing together leading philosophers and Wittgenstein scholars, it offers a genuinely critical approach, developing new perspectives and demonstrating Wittgenstein's relevance for contemporary philosophy. This volume will appeal to readers interested in the later Wittgenstein, in addition to those interested in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology. (shrink)

Andy Egan's Smoking Lesion and Psycho Button cases are supposed to be counterexamples to Causal Decision Theory. This paper argues that they are not: more precisely, it argues that if CDT makes the right call in Newcomb's problem then it makes the right call in Egan cases too.

Sophisticated ‘tickle’-style defences of Evidential Decision Theory take your motivational state to screen off your act from any state that is causally independent of it, thus ensuring that EDT and CDT converge. That leads to unacceptable instability in cases in which the correct action is obvious. We need a more liberal conception of what the agent controls. It follows that an ordinary deliberator should sometimes consider the past and not only the future to be subject to her present choice.

The best-known argument for Evidential Decision Theory (EDT) is the ‘Why ain’cha rich?’ challenge to rival Causal Decision Theory (CDT). The basis for this challenge is that in Newcomb-like situations, acts that conform to EDT may be known in advance to have the better return than acts that conform to CDT. Frank Arntzenius has recently proposed an ingenious counter argument, based on an example in which, he claims, it is predictable in advance that acts that conform to EDT will do (...) less well than acts that conform to CDT. We raise two objections to Arntzenius’s example. We argue, first, that the example is subtly incoherent, in a way that undermines its effectiveness against EDT; and, second, that the example relies on calculating the average return over an inappropriate population of acts. (shrink)

Introduction: why happiness, why now? -- Happy objects -- Feminist killjoys -- Unhappy queers -- Melancholic migrants -- Happy futures -- Conclusion: happiness, ethics, possibility.

Business relations rely on shared perceptions of what is acceptable/expected norms of behavior. Immense expansion in transnational business made rudimentary consensus on acceptable business practices across cultural boundaries particularly important. Nonetheless, as more and more nations with different cultural and historical experiences interact in the global economy, the potential for misunderstandings based on different expectations is magnified. Such misunderstandings emerge in a growing literature on "improper" business practices – articulated from a narrow cultural perspective. This paper reports an ongoing research (...) on the cultural and contextual aspects of business ethics. The objective is to investigate how the perception/attitudes of business students towards the ethical dimension of doing business varies in different countries; Whether there are socio-cultural factors that influence the perception of ethicality in business practices. Research findings among business students in six countries: China, Egypt, Finland, Korea, Russia, and the U.S.A. are reported. While all groups had basic agreement on what constitutes ethical business practices, differences are found in the respondents'' tolerance to damage resulting from "unethical" behavior. Without underestimating the role of national culture, variations in research results also point to the importance of current socio-political developments in the relevant countries. Implications for business teaching and management development are discussed. (shrink)

This discussion note examines a recent argument for the principle that any counterfactual with true components is itself true. That argument rests upon two widely accepted principles of counterfactual logic to which the paper presents counterexamples. The conclusion speculates briefly upon the wider lessons that philosophers should draw from these examples for the semantics of counterfactuals.

International marketing practices, embedded in a strong ethical doctrine, can play a vital role in raising the standards of business conduct worldwide, while in no way compromising the quality of services or products offered to customers, or surrendering the profit margins of businesses. Adherence to such ethical practices can help to elevate the standards of behavior and thus of living, of traders and consumers alike. Against this background, this paper endeavors to identify the salient features of the Islamic framework of (...) International Marketing Ethics. In particular, it highlights the capabilities and strengths of this framework in creating and sustaining a strong ethical international marketing culture. At the heart of Islamic marketing is the principle of value-maximization based on equity and justice (constituting just dealing and fair play) for the wider welfare of the society. Selected key international marketing issues are examined from an Islamic perspective which, it is argued, if adhered to, can help to create a value-loaded global ethical marketing framework for MNCs in general, and establish harmony and meaningful cooperation between international marketers and Muslim target markets in particular. (shrink)

The mainstream literature on corporate governance is based on the premise of conflicts of interest in a competitive game played by variously defined stakeholders and thus builds explicitly and/or implicitly on masculinist ethical theories. This article argues that insights from feminist ethics, and in particular ethics of care, can provide a different, yet relevant, lens through which to study corporate governance. Based on feminist ethical theories, the article conceptualises a governance model that is different from the current normative orthodoxy.

Mario Gómez-Torrente (2006) says that whilst theoretical identifications (e.g. 'All lightning is electrical discharge') do not entail their own necessitations, they do entail the necessitation of a weaker statement. And he claims that this weaker entailment serves Kripke's purposes as well as the stronger one would have. I argue that this is false. Section 1 says what the weaker entailment is; section 2 says why it matters. Section 3 argues that the entailment identified at section 1 does not meet the (...) purpose identified at section 2. Section 4 rejects two possible objections. The aim is to illustrate (not establish) the general claim that those 'modal facts' that are not entirely speculative are quite useless. (shrink)

Introduction: find your way -- Orientations toward objects -- Sexual orientation -- The orient and other others -- Conclusion: disorientation and queer objects.

The model of feminism as humanist in practice and postmodern in theory is inadequate. Feminist practice and theory directly inform each other to displace both humanist and postmodern conceptions of the subject. An examination of feminism's use of rights discourse suggests that feminist practice questions the humanist conception of the subject as a self-identity. Likewise, feminist theory undermines the postmodern emphasis on the constitutive instability and indeterminacy of the subject.

Medieval Muslim scholars were challenged with squaring their conceptions of prophetic infallibility with reports that Muhammad disobeyed revelatory commands from God. The manner in which they rehabilitated the prophetic image in these cases had corresponding repercussions in the fields of jurisprudence, theology, and legal theory. The present article uses the case of Q. 8:67 to demonstrate the intertwined nature of the Islamic sciences and the stakes involved when delimiting the prophetic ability to err and/or disobey God.

To help ensure the ethical conduct of research, many have recommended educational efforts in research ethics to investigators and members of research ethics committees (RECs). One type of education activity involves multi-day workshops in research ethics. To be effective, such workshops should contain the appropriate content and teaching techniques geared towards the learning styles of the targeted audiences. To ensure consistency in content and quality, we describe the development of a curriculum guide, core competencies and associated learning objectives and activities (...) to help educators organize research ethics workshops in their respective institutions. The curriculum guide is divided into modular units to enable planners to develop workshops of different lengths and choose content materials that match the needs, abilities, and prior experiences of the target audiences. The content material in the curriculum guide is relevant for audiences in the Middle East, because individuals from the Middle East who participated in a Certificate Program in research ethics selected and developed the training materials (e.g., articles, powerpoint slides, case studies, protocols). Also, many of the activities incorporate active-learning methods, consisting of group work activities analyzing case studies and reviewing protocols. The development of such a workshop training curriculum guide represents a sustainable educational resource to enhance research ethics capacity in the Middle East. (shrink)

This is a survey article on algebraic logic. It gives a historical background leading up to a modern perspective. Central problems in algebraic logic (like the representation problem) are discussed in connection to other branches of logic, like modal logic, proof theory, model-theoretic forcing, finite combinatorics, and Gödel's incompleteness results. We focus on cylindric algebras. Relation algebras and polyadic algebras are mostly covered only insofar as they relate to cylindric algebras, and even there we have not told the whole story. (...) We relate the algebraic notion of neat embeddings (a notion special to cylindric algebras) to the metalogical ones of provability, interpolation and omitting types in variants of first logic. Another novelty that occurs here is relating the algebraic notion of atom-canonicity for a class of boolean algebras with operators to the metalogical one of omitting types for the corresponding logic. A hitherto unpublished application of algebraic logic to omitting types of first order logic is given. Proofs are included when they serve to illustrate certain concepts. Several open problems are posed. We have tried as much as possible to avoid exploring territory already explored in the survey articles of Monk [93] and Németi [97] in the subject. (shrink)

A large class of the dynamical laws for causal sets described by a classical process of sequential growth yields a cyclic universe, whose cycles of expansion and contraction are punctuated by single ‘‘origin elements’’ of the causal set. We present evidence that the effective dynamics of the immediate future of one of these origin elements, within the context of the sequential growth dynamics, yields an initial period of de Sitter-like exponential expansion, and argue that the resulting picture has many attractive (...) features as a model of the early universe, with the potential to solve some of the standard model puzzles without any fine-tuning. (shrink)

Since the introduction of drugs to prevent vertical transmission of HIV, the purpose of and approach to HIV testing of pregnant women has increasingly become an area of major controversy. In recent years, many strategies to increase the uptake of HIV testing have focused on offering HIV tests to women in pregnancy-related services. New global guidance issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) specifically notes these services as an entry point for (...) provider-initiated HIV testing and counseling (PITC). The guidance constitutes a useful first step towards a framework within which PITC sensitive to health, human rights and ethical concerns can be provided to pregnant women in health facilities. However, a number of issues will require further attention as implementation moves forward. It is incumbent on all those involved in the scale up of PITC to ensure that it promotes long-term connection with relevant health services and does not result simply in increased testing with no concrete benefits being accrued by the women being tested. Within health services, this will require significant attention to informed consent, pre- and post-test counseling, patient confidentiality, referrals and access to appropriate services, as well as reduction of stigma and discrimination. Beyond health services, efforts will be needed to address larger societal, legal, policy and contextual issues. The health and human rights of pregnant women must be a primary consideration in how HIV testing is implemented; they can benefit greatly from PITC but only if it is carried out appropriately. (shrink)

Medieval Muslim scholars unequivocally prohibited the torture of prisoners of war out of a concern for maintaining theoretical constructs about the boundaries of the Muslim and non-Muslim communities. Muslim scholars worried that the torturing prisoners of war would compromise values and ideals predicated on such constructs, and that the demands of citizenship trumped any benefit to the Muslim community that might accrue from torture.

SC , CA , QA and QEA stand for the classes of Pinter's substitution algebras, Tarski's cylindric algebras, Halmos' quasipolyadic algebras, and quasipolyadic equality algebras of dimension , respectively. Generalizing a result of Németi on cylindric algebras, we show that for K {SC, CA, QA, QEA} and ordinals , the class Nr K of -dimensional neat reducts of -dimensional K algebras, though closed under taking homomorphic images and products, is not closed under forming subalgebras (i.e. is not a variety) if (...) and only if > 1.From this it easily follows that for 1 , the operation of forming -neat reducts of algebras in K does not commute with forming subalgebras, a notion to be made precise. (shrink)

Food irradiation is a physical method of processing food (e.g. freezing, canning). It has been thoroughly researched over the last four decades and is recognized as a safe and wholesome method. It has the potential both of disinfesting dried food to reduce storage losses and disinfesting fruits and vegetables to meet quarantine requirements for export trade. Low doses of irradiation inhibit spoilage losses due to sprouting of root and tuber crops. Food- borne diseases due to contamination by pathogenic microorganisms and (...) parasites of meat, poultry, fish, fishery products and spices are on the increase. Irradiation of these solid foods can decontaminate them of pathogenic organisms and thus provide safe food to the consumer. Irradiation can successfully replace the fumigation treatment of cocoa beans and coffee beans and disinfest dried fish, dates, dried fruits, etc. One of the most important advantages of food irradiation processing is that it is a coldprocess which does not significantly alter physico-chemical characters of the treated product. It can be applied to food after its final packaging. Similar to other physical processes of food processing, (e.g. canning, freezing), irradiation is a capital intensive process. Thus, adequate product volume must be made available in order to maximize the use of the facility and minimize the unit cost of treatment. Lack of harmonization of regulations among the countries which have approved irradiated foods hampers the introduction of this technique for international trade. Action at the international level has to be taken in order to remedy this situation. One of the important limitations of food irradiation processing is its slow acceptance by consumers, due inter alia to a perceived association with radioactivity. The food industry tends to be reluctant to use the technology in view of uncertainties regarding consumer acceptance of treated foods. Several market testing and consumer acceptance studies have been carried out on food irradiation in recent years. These studies showed that, if the safety and the benefits of food irradiation were properly explained, the consumers were willing to accept irradiated foods. Considering its potential role in the reduction of post-harvest losses, providing safe supply of food and overcoming quarantine barriers, food irradiation has received wider government approvals during the last decade. There is also a trend towards increased commercialization of irradiated food. Currently, there are 47 irradiation facilities in some 23 countries being used for treating foods for commercial purposes. (shrink)

We give a new characterization of the class of completely representable cylindric algebras of dimension 2 #lt; n w via special neat embeddings. We prove an independence result connecting cylindric algebra to Martin''s axiom. Finally we apply our results to finite-variable first order logic showing that Henkin and Orey''s omitting types theorem fails for L n, the first order logic restricted to the first n variables when 2 #lt; n#lt;w. L n has been recently (and quite extensively) studied as a (...) many-dimensional modal logic. (shrink)

We show that not all epimorphisms are surjective in certain classes of infinite dimensional cylindric algebras, Pinter's substitution algebras and Halmos' quasipolyadic algebras with and without equality. It follows that these classes fail to have the strong amalgamation property. This answers a question in [3] and a question of Pigozzi in his landmark paper on amalgamation [9]. The cylindric case was first proved by Judit Madarasz [7]. The proof presented herein is substantially different. By a result of Németi, our result (...) implies that the Beth-definability Theorem fails for certain expansions of first order logic. (shrink)

Following research initiated by Tarski, Craig and Németi, and futher pursued by Sain and others, we show that for certain subsets G of ω ω, atomic countable G polyadic algebras are completely representable. G polyadic algebras are obtained by restricting the similarity type and axiomatization of ω-dimensional polyadic algebras to finite quantifiers and substitutions in G. This contrasts the cases of cylindric and relation algebras.

Background Posthumous organ procurement is hindered by the consenting process. Several consenting systems have been proposed. There is limited information on public relative attitudes towards various consenting systems, especially in Middle Eastern/Islamic countries. Methods We surveyed 698 Saudi Adults attending outpatient clinics at a tertiary care hospital. Preference and perception of norm regarding consenting options for posthumous organ donation were explored. Participants ranked (1, most agreeable) the following, randomly-presented, options from 1 to 11: no-organ-donation, presumed consent, informed consent by donor-only, (...) informed consent by donor-or-surrogate, and mandatory choice; the last three options ± medical or financial incentive. Results Mean(SD) age was 32(9) year, 27% were males, 50% were patients’ companions, 60% had ≥ college education, and 20% and 32%, respectively, knew an organ donor or recipient. Mandated choice was among the top three choices for preference of 54% of respondents, with an overall median[25%,75%] ranking score of 3[2,6], and was preferred over donor-or-surrogate informed consent (4[2,7], p vs. 11[6,11], respectively, p = 0.002). Compared to females, males more perceived donor-or-surrogate informed consent as the norm (3[1,6] vs. 5[3,7], p vs. 8[4,9], p vs. 5[2,7], p Conclusions We conclude that: 1) most respondents were in favor of posthumous organ donation, 2) mandated choice system was the most preferred and presumed consent system was the least preferred, 3) there was no difference between preference and perception of norm in consenting systems ranking, and 4) financial (especially in females) and medical (especially in males) incentives reduced preference. (shrink)

SC, CA, QA and QEA denote the class of Pinter’s substitution algebras, Tarski’s cylindric algebras, Halmos’ quasi-polyadic and quasi-polyadic equality algebras, respectively. Let . and . We show that the class of n dimensional neat reducts of algebras in K m is not elementary. This solves a problem in [2]. Also our result generalizes results proved in [1] and [2].

The paper argues that on three out of five possible hypotheses about the Stern-Gerlach experiment we can construct novel and comparatively realistic decision problems on which (a) Causal decision Theory and Evidential Decision Theory conflict (b) Causal Decision Theory and Quantum Mechanics conflict. It concludes that Causal Decision Theory is false.

This book offers for the first time a complete scholarly translation, commentary, and glossary in a modern European language of the logic section of Ibn S=in=a's (d. 1037 CE) very important compendium Ial-Naj=at (The Deliverance). The original, written in Arabic, is the product of the middle period of the most renowned Muslim philosopher and physician, known in the Latin West as Avicenna. Avicenna's logic system took as its starting point the Aristotelian and the Peripatetic tradition, but diverged from these in (...) fascinating and original ways. The system presented by him becaume the standard reference and focus of further elaboration, debate, and innovation in the Islamic scholarly tradition, deeply influencing both the 'traditional religious' sciences (such as theology and law) and the naturalized Greek system (such as metaphysics). Because the Naj=at is both comprehensive and relatively terse, this translation, which has been the diachronic subject of study in various mad=aris and has a number of attached commentaries and glosses, will be extremely useful to those who do not read Arabic, but who wish to gain an overview of Avicenna's logic. (shrink)

Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328), one of the most controversial thinkers in Islamic religious history, was repeatedly imprisoned during his lifetime. Today, he is revered by the Wahhabi movement and championed by Salafi groups who call for a return to the pristine golden age of the Prophet. His writings have also been used by radical groups, such as al-Qaeda, to justify acts of terrorism and armed struggle. In order to explain this modern influence, this volume offers a fresh perspective on (...) Ibn Taymiyya's life, thought and legacy. The articles in this volume, written by leading authorities in the field, study Ibn Taymiyya's highly original contributions to Islamic theology, law, Qur'anic exegesis and political thought. Contrary to his current image as an anti-rationalist puritan, this volume shows Ibn Taymiyya to be one of the most intellectually rigorous, complex and interesting figures in Islamic intellectual history. This is the first comprehensive academic treatment of Ibn Taymiyya to appear in a Western language in over half a century. It is of major importance to scholars of Islamic intellectual history, as well as to the students of modern Islamic movements and ideologies. (shrink)

I reply to Ahmed's rejection (2011) of my argument (Walters 2009) that all counterfactuals with true antecedents and consequents are themselves true.

In reply to Arif Ahmed, I argue that the apparatus of essentiality and qualified and unqualified possibilist identifications, developed in my paper 'Rigidity and Essentiality', can be used to provide a flawless reconstruction of several Kripkean ideas about the semantics of typical natural kind predicates, the essence of natural kinds, the contingency of usual descriptive identifications, and the arguments against psychophysical identity theories.

The article claims that Ziauddin Sardar's contribution to the religion-science conversation is primarily a performance situated in a social location that gives him access to a highly significant perspective. Sardar places Western science within the context of the Western culture from which it emerged and which it continues to serve. The contemporary hegemonous science of today is one form of science. Its acceptance as a universal and objective form enables its users and promoters to exercise imperialistic control over much (...) of the world. Sardar's critique receives its effective bite from his social location as an immigrant Muslim, raised and educated in Western culture. The article examines the relevance of his social location to the issues with which he is most concerned, such as promotion of the rights and responsibilities of cultures, in particular Islamic cultures, traditionally cast as "Other" by the West. They too have their sciences and these sciences function often within worldviews that are "religious." Sardar's critique of science and his call for the recognition of the so-called Other cultures is significant for its performativity. His work is not merely a descriptive or explanatory account, but bears also the performative characteristics that seek to effect the change for which he calls. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

We describe the earliest occurrences of the Liar Paradox in the Arabic tradition. e early Mutakallimūn claim the Liar Sentence is both true and false; they also associate the Liar with problems concerning plural subjects, which is somewhat puzzling. Abharī (1200-1265) ascribes an unsatisfiable truth condition to the Liar Sentence—as he puts it, its being true is the conjunction of its being true and false—and so concludes that the sentence is not true. Tūsī (1201-1274) argues that self-referential sentences, like the (...) Liar, are not truth-apt, and defends this claim by appealing to a correspondence theory of truth. Translations of the texts are provided as an appendix. (shrink)

This collection of papers addresses a variety of aspects of the life and thought of the medieval philosopher Avicenna including his reception of Classical ...

This paper argues that chance (risk or opportunity) discovery is challenging, from a reasoning point of view, because it represents a dilemma for inductive reasoning. Chance discovery shares many features with the grue paradox. Consequently, Bayesian approaches represent a potential solution. The Bayesian solution evaluates alternative models generated using a temporal logic planner to manage the chance. Surprise indices are used in monitoring the conformity of the real world and the assessed probabilities. Game theoretic approaches are proposed to deal with (...) multi-agent interaction in chance management. (shrink)

To determine the knowledge, attitude, and ethical concerns of medical students and graduates with regard to Embryonic Stem Cell (ESC) research. This questionnaire based descriptive study was conducted at the Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK), Pakistan from February to July 2008. A well structured questionnaire was administered to medical students and graduate doctors, which included their demographic profile as well as questions in line with the study objective. Informed consent was taken and full confidentiality was assured to the participants. Data were (...) entered in a Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version.12) and analyzed. A total of 204 male and 216 female medical students and doctors were administered questionnaires out of which 105 males (51.4%) and 108 females (50%) were aware of the embryonic stem cell research and its ethical implications. Forty percent males and 47% of females were of the opinion that life begins at conception. Forty-six percent males and 39% females were in favor of stem cell research while only 31% males and 28% females supported the ESC research. Less than 1/3 of students supported using frozen embryos for research purposes while more than 2/3 indicated that they were unlikely to support abortion for stem cell research purposes. The majority of the students were in favor of stem cell research with some reservations regarding ESC research. A sizeable number of students withheld their views, reflecting their poor understanding of medical ethics. The result of the study indicates a need for incorporating bioethics into the medical curriculum. (shrink)

Book Review: Ahmed Al Dawoody, The Islamic Law of War - Justifications and Regulations -.

This paper is based on the findings from a study in which social workers in healthcare settings were asked for their perspectives on cultural and racial difference as these apply to their practice with racialized clients. In examining the varied practice philosophies and approaches they employ, we find that older practice models based on problematized knowledge about racialized Others are being, alternately, reinstated and contested. In grappling with how to practise, participants describe approaches that, in many cases, effectively individualize clients (...) and ignore hierarchies and systems of domination. Following Sarah Ahmed's work on ethical encounters (Strange Encounters, Routledge, London, 2000), we argue for a socially and historically informed consideration of power relations as they shape professional practice. (shrink)

The present study examined how the pre-war debate of the US decision to invade Iraq (in March 2003) was discursively constructed in the US/British mainstream newspaper opinion/editorial (op/ed) argumentation. Drawing on theoretical insights from critical discourse analysis and argumentation theory, I problematised the fallacious discussion used in the pro-war op/eds to build up a ‘moral/legal case’ for war on Iraq based on adversarial (rather than dialogical) argumentation. The proponents of war deployed ‘instrumental rationality’ (ends-justify-means reasoning), ‘ethical necessity’ (Bush’s ‘Preemption Doctrine’) (...) and ‘humanitarian virtue’ (the bombing of Iraq to ‘save’ Iraqis from Saddam’s pestilent tyranny) to justify the pending invasion of Iraq. Their arguments intertextually resonated with Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’ rhetoric in a way that created a form of indexical association through ‘recontextualisation’. The type of arguments marshalled by the pro-war op/ed commentators uncritically bolstered the set of US official ‘truth claims’ and ‘presuppositions’. (shrink)

Introduction SOCIOLOGY: A SUBVERTED PROJECT We shall argue here that the continued interlacing of philosophy and sociology distorts sociology and limits its ...

The article examines how some culturally shared and corporeally enacted beliefs and norms about sexed and racialized embodiment can form embodied agency, and this with the aid of the concepts of incorporation and excorporation. It discusses how the phenomenological concept of excorporation can help us examine painful experiences of how one's lived body breaks in the encounter with others. The article also examines how a continuous excorporation can result in bodily alienation, and what embodied resistance can mean when one has (...) undergone or undergoes excorporation. Elaborating on the work of, among others, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, Drew Leder, and Sarah Ahmed, I discuss incorporation and excorporation of beliefs and norms regarding sexual difference, such as beliefs and norms regarding female and male embodiment, through a reading of Jeffrey Eugenides' novel Middlesex. I also suggest that it is useful to understand the postcolonial scholar Frantz Fanon's narrative of how he could not but attend to his own skin color while living in France in the 1940s and 1950s, in terms of excorporation. Whereas these are different narratives in many ways, I regard them as helpful for clarifying what excorporation implies and what analytic work this concept can enable. (shrink)

Nobody has died yet as a result of the ongoing trials for transferring money internationally without a license of four Harrisonburg men from Kurdish parts of Iraq: Rashid Qambari, Ahmed Abdullah, Amir Rashid, and Fadhil Noroly. However, before coming here they were threatened because of their work for groups associated with the United States, and they were brought here by the United States government as part of Operation Pacific Haven. Saddam Hussein killed members of local Kurdish families. Qambari, convicted (...) on January 30, 2006, has stated, “If I get deported back to Iraq, I will be a nice gift to the insurgents. I will be dead.” Deportation is a possible outcome of his conviction. (shrink)

Estudio en el que se intenta exponer y definir los diferentes tipos del lenguaje como el jurídico, el teológico y el ascético-místico en Miftāḥ al-sa‘āda [Llave de la felicidad] de Ibn al-‘Arīf. Tipos que son analizados pormenorizadamente, para concluir con la influencia del lenguaje sufí de Ibn al-‘Arīf en la obra de Ibn ‘Arabī, apoyándonos tanto en consideraciones de índole semántica como mística.

This is a 5 page summary with three diagrams of the main objectives and some work in progress at the University of Birmingham Cognition and Affect project. involving: Professor Glyn Humphreys (School of Psychology), and Luc Beaudoin, Chris Paterson, Tim Read, Edmund Shing, Ian Wright, Ahmed El-Shafei, and (from October 1994) Chris Complin (research students). The project is concerned with "global" design requirements for coping simultaneously with coexisting but possibly unrelated goals, desires, preferences, intentions, and other kinds of motivators, (...) all at different stages of processing. Our work builds on and extends seminal ideas of H.A.Simon (1967). We are exploring "broad and shallow" architectures combining varied capabilities most of which are not implemented in great depth. The poster summarises some ideas about management and meta-management processes, attention filtering, and the relevance to emotional states involved "perturbances", where there is partial loss of control of attention. (shrink)

Legal information certification and secured storage combined with documents electronic signature are of great interest when digital documents security and conservation are in concern. Therefore, these new and evolving technologies offer powerful abilities, such as identification, authentication and certification. The latter contribute to increase the global security of legal digital archives conservation and access. However, currently used cryptographic and hash coding concepts cannot intrinsically enclose cognitive information about both the signer and the signed content. Indeed, an evolution of these technologies (...) may be necessary to achieve full text researches within hundreds or thousands of electronically signed documents. This article aims at describing a possible model along with associated processes to create and make use of these new electronic signatures called “meaningful electronic signatures” as opposed to traditional electronic signatures based on bit per bit computation. (shrink)

We have measured the change of lung mechanical parameters on isolated rabbit lungs exposed to chlorine gas (Cl{in2}). Experimental results show parallel increase in elastance and resistance of impaired lungs. We tried to determine whether this may be explained by a reduction of the ventilated areas in the lung, consecutive to closure of some airways. We have then tried to simulate these experimental results by studying the effects of various airways occlusions imposed on two concurrent models (symmetrical and dissymmetrical) of (...) the tracheo-bronchial tree. For each model, we successively evaluated the resistance of the normal lung, simulated a partial peripheral airways occlusion and estimated the induced changes in total resistance. Analytical expressions of the "occluded lung" elastance and resistance have been found for the symmetrical model but not for the dissymmetrical model (a graphical approach is proposed). With the symmetrical model, simulated results are comparable to experimental ones when the occlusion level is proximal. Whatever the dissymmetry level (δ) of the fractal tree model, we could not simulate the expected increase in resistance with the observed increase in elastance. We conclude that either the occlusion is non homogeneous or the lung impairment is not only a reduction in ventilated areas. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the meaning and scope of social responsibility in a state-owned enterprise. Is corporate social responsibility (CSR) a meaningful concept for a state-owned enterprise, as opposed to a privately-owned corporation, given that it is created with social as well as economic aims? To try to answer to this question, the case of Sonatrach, an Algerian oil company, is examined. The lack of statistical data does not allow an assessment of CSR actions undertaken by (...) this company since 2004. The analysis identifies two main obstacles to the effectiveness of CSR in state-owned enterprises: (a) the system of internal governance ischaracterized by a lack of control; (b) the competitive and social environment is characterized by a partial application of the logic of the market, which does not allow the optimal allocation of means. (shrink)

Spirituality is deeply important, especially for contemporary times, because it’s such an alienating time. And at the end of the day I am a believing Muslim. I am a sceptical Muslim, in the sense that I believe in asking questions and I would ask those questions that many Muslims would not even dream of asking. But that doesn’t make me a non-believer. So in that sense I’m not a secularist. Religion plays a very important part in my life, in what (...) I believe, how I look at the world, what I do and how I behave. (shrink)