This chapter contains sections titled: Following a rule Practices and techniques Doing the right thing and doing the same thing Privacy and the community view On not digging below bedrock.

This paper compares several models of formalization. It articulates criteria of correct formalization and identifies their problems. All of the discussed criteria are so called “semantic” criteria, which refer to the interpretation of logical formulas. However, as will be shown, different versions of an implicitly applied or explicitly stated criterion of correctness depend on different understandings of “interpretation” in this context.

Our exploratory study considers whether the internal audit function is an efficient “third line of defense” for risk management and control as proposed by The Institute of Internal Auditors. To that end, we interview chief audit executives and experienced internal auditors to examine whether CAEs manage the impressions of audit committee members in the annual accountability process. We also provide an illustration of impression management techniques through a documentary case that explores a unique and exclusive dataset consisting (...) of the main guidance, framework, and accountability documents of one of these organizations. Our analysis highlights how several macro- and microimpression management techniques were used to burnish the image of internal auditors and, more importantly, the management team. Rather than monitoring managers, the CAEs team up with them. Our findings cast doubts on the conceptualization of internal audit as the independent third line of defense envisioned to be a keystone of the governance mosaic. This study supports other research that questions the effectiveness of internal auditing as a governance mechanism. It also contributes to the impression management literature by exposing impression management practices that occur through a private reporting channel—the internal audit function’s annual accountability to the audit committee. Last but not least, significant ethical concerns are raised in regard to internal audit, and research is urged in that area. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Negotiating International Bioethics: A Response to Tom Beauchamp and Ruth MacklinRobert Baker (bio)AbstractCan the bioethical theories that have served American bioethics so well, serve international bioethics as well? In two papers in the previous issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, I contend that the form of principlist fundamentalism endorsed by American bioethicists like Tom Beauchamp and Ruth Macklin will not play on an international stage. Deploying techniques (...) of postmodern scholarship, I argue that principlist fundamentalism justifies neither the condemnation of the Nazi doctors at Nuremberg, nor, as the Report of the Advisory Committee on the Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) demonstrates, condemnation of Cold War radiation researchers. Principlist fundamentalism thus appears to be philosophically bankrupt. In this issue of the Journal, Beauchamp and Macklin reject this claim, arguing that I have misread the ACHRE report and misunderstood Nazism. They also argue that the form of post-postmodern negotiated human rights theory that I proffer is adequate only insofar as it is itself really fundamentalist; insofar as I take postmodernism seriously, however, I mire international bioethics in relativism. In this response, I reaffirm my anti-fundamentalism, provide further evidence in support of my reading of the ACHRE report, and defend my post-postmodern version of rights theory. I also develop criteria for a minimally adequate theoretical framework for international bioethics.Universal Morality Reconsidered 1Paradoxically, the need for content-full universal moral principles tends to be most deeply felt and most adamantly asserted in the face of striking evidence of their absence. People are inspired to claim that Nazis must accept the universal principle that doing harm is wrong because they are appalled by the horror of the Holocaust. Yet the event itself provides palpable evidence that the Nazis saw no wrong in doing harm. One has the suspicion that claims of universalism [End Page 423] confound philosophical aspirations with empirical observations. This distinction makes a significant difference because empirical claims can be disconfirmed by data, whereas philosophical claims can only be challenged on the level of theory.I am, like Tom Beauchamp and James Childress, a common morality theorist. Thus, I believe, as they do, that ethics “relies heavily on ordinary shared moral beliefs for its content, rather than relying on pure reason, natural law, a special moral sense, and the like” (Beauchamp and Childress 1994, p. 100). For most of human history sexism and slavery were considered moral. They certainly were the norm. Thus, if one looks to common morality as the source of moral content, empirical claims of moral universalism appear suspect. Insofar as one would condemn sexism and slavery, one needs to find some theoretical justification for condemnation that goes beyond a consensus on moral content (hence my embrace of the structural analogue of human rights theory).Beauchamp, however, takes a very different view. He asserts in his critique of my position, that: “it is an institutional fact about the substance of morality (not merely [as Baker claims] the formal features of the concept of morality and not merely my view of it) that it contains fundamental and shared precepts. It is by appeal to this shared moral substance that persons are enabled to make justifiable cross-temporal and cross-cultural judgments” (Beauchamp 1998, p. 395). Beauchamp is thus claiming that it is both an empirical and a conceptual truth there is common core underlying the morality of all societies. He fleshes this claim out in another passage.[T]he term morality refers to norms about right and wrong human conduct that are so widely shared that they form a stable... communal consensus.... These standards sometimes vary from society to society, but embedded in the beliefs of all moral societies are the core dimensions of morality: Persons must keep their promises, must respect the rights of others, must not kill or cause harm to innocent persons, must not abuse children, and the like. All morally committed persons are comfortable with these norms and do not doubt their relevance and importance.(Beauchamp 1998, p. 394)Insofar as Beauchamp is making an empirical claim in this passage, the examples cited are problematic. “Promise keeping,” for example, cannot be a cultural universal because the practice is... (shrink)

In discussions about whether the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles is compatible with structuralist ontologies of mathematics, it is usually assumed that individual objects are subject to criteria of identity which somehow account for the identity of the individuals. Much of this debate concerns structures that admit of non-trivial automorphisms. We consider cases from graph theory that violate even weak formulations of PII. We argue that (i) the identity or difference of places in a structure is not to (...) be accounted for by anything other than the structure itself and that (ii) mathematical practice provides evidence for this view. We want to thank Leon Horsten, Jeff Ketland, Øystein Linnebo, John Mayberry, Richard Pettigrew, and Philip Welch for valuable comments on drafts of this paper. We are especially grateful to Fraser MacBride for correcting our interpretation of two of his papers and for other helpful comments. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

International large-scale assessments, such as PISA, provide structured and static data. However, due to its extensive databases, several researchers place it as a reference in Big Data in Education. With the goal of exploring which factors at country, school and student level have a higher relevance in predicting student performance, this paper proposes an Educational Data Mining approach to detect and analyze factors linked to academic performance. To this end, we conducted a secondary data analysis and built decision trees (C4.5 (...) algorithm) to obtain a predictive model of school performance. Specifically, we selected as predictor variables a set of socioeconomic, process and outcome variables from PISA 2018 and other sources (World Bank, 2020). Since the unit of analysis were schools from all the countries included in PISA 2018 (n= 21,903), student and teacher predictor variables were imputed to the school database. Based on the available student performance scores in Reading, Math, and Science, we applied k-means clustering to obtain a categorized (three categories) target variable of global school performance. Results show the existence of two main branches in the decision tree, split according to the schools’ mean socioeconomic status (SES). While performance in high-SES schools is influenced by educational factors such as metacognitive strategies or achievement motivation, performance in low-SES schools is affected in greater measure by country-level socioeconomic indicators such as GDP, and individual educational indicators are relegated to a secondary level. Since these evidences are in line and delve into previous research, this work concludes by analyzing its potential contribution to support the decision making processes regarding educational policies. (shrink)

In the early 1970s, the major industrial states were preparing to shift to nuclear fission as their principal source of electrical power. But that change has not occurred. In part, this is due to a growing public recognition that techniques and institutions for management of spent nuclear fuel, separated plutonium, and long-lived radioactive wastes are not yet fully developed. The consequent pressures for resolution have spurred a series of often ill-defined and sometimes contradictory attempts to promote international cooperation and control (...) of hazardous activities. How are these varied suggestions to be compared and evaluated? By what criteria can plans be selected that are likely to be both effective and negotiable? In this study, Gene I. Rochlin, physicist and social scientist, explores the technical, political, and institutional aspects of international nuclear export and fuel cycle policies. He categorizes existing proposals and suggests way to develop new ones that better promote both national and international goals. Dr. Rochlin argues neither for nor against the use of nuclear power or plutonium fuels. Instead, he addresses the question of how international arrangements could be reached that might jointly satisfy the objective of the several key nations, yet not be too difficult to negotiate. He concludes that a major fault has been the tendency to improvise arrangements for specific technical or industrial operations. As a result, overall social and political goals have become the bargaining points for compromise. Yet attempts to simultaneously resolve all problems are unlikely to prove fruitful. Dr. Rochlin suggests instead the formation of institutions organized around more limited social, political, and technical objectives, even at the expense of excluding some nations or omitting some aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. Only by so doing, he argues, can immediate agreements be reached that preserve the potential for more comprehensive future arrangements without sacrificing industrial, environmental, or nonproliferation goals. This important book will be of interest to scientists, social scientists, government officials, and others concerned with the problems of plutonium management and nuclear wastes. (shrink)

Democracy has been a flawed hegemony since the fall of communism. Its flexibility, its commitment to equality of representation, and its recognition of the legitimacy of opposition politics are all positive features for political institutions. But democracy has many deficiencies: it is all too easily held hostage by powerful interests; it often fails to advance social justice; and it does not cope well with a number of features of the political landscape, such as political identities, boundary disputes, and environmental crises. (...) Although democracy is valuable it fits uneasily with other political values and is in many respects less than equal to the demands it confronts. In this volume prominent political theorists and social scientists present original discussions of such central issues. Democracy's Values deals with the nature and value of democracy, particularly the tensions between it and such goods as justice, equality, efficiency, and freedom. (shrink)

Faced with what he saw as the danger to society in the ascendancy of natural science and decline in religion and morals, the great French sociologist Emile Durkheim sought the origins of both religion and science in their function in primitive societies as guarantors of social solidarity. In contrast to Frazer, Tylor, and other early anthropologists, he looked for the internal intelligibility of myth and ritual in social terms, rather than regarding them just as failed attempts to state objective (...) truths about the natural world of the same kind as those later arrived at by natural science. One does not have to accept Durkheim's ultimately atheistic identification of God with Society, nor the politically authoritarian consequences which have some-times been held to follow from this identification, to see that Durkheim has raised a set of issues of crucial importance for a discussion of science and the myths and doctrines of religion. For what he has done is to reintroduce a third factor into the perennial and by now rather frustrating dichotomy between science and religion, namely society and the sciences of man. It is some consequences of this approach that I want to explore in this paper. (shrink)

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-021-09793-2.

Discussion concerning the meaning and analysis of “punishment” has centered, in large measure, on claims for a logical connection between “punishment” and “guilt.” However, more and more in the literature focus has shifted from guilt as the defining feature of “punishment” to guilt as only one of many constitutive conditions satisfaction of which is necessary for standard cases with allowance made for other correct, though secondary, uses of the term.

For the last 20 years, there has been lively debate about which principle of distributive and corrective justice should be used in dividing, among the various countries, the costs associated wit...

We are all guided by thousands of norms, but how did our capacity for normative cognition evolve? I propose there is a deep but neglected link between normative cognition and practical skill. In modern humans, complex motor skills and craft skills, such as toolmaking, are guided by internally represented norms of correct performance. Moreover, it is plausible that core components of human normative cognition evolved as a solution to the distinctive problems of transmitting complex motor skills and craft skills, especially (...) skills related to toolmaking, through social learning. If this is correct, the expansion of the normative domain beyond technique to encompass more abstract norms of fairness, reciprocity, ritual and kinship involved the elaboration of a basic platform for the guidance of skilled action by technical norms. This article motivates and defends this “skill hypothesis” for the origin of normative cognition and sets out various ways in which it could be empirically tested. (shrink)

Table 4 in original article has been corrected.

The International Panel on Social Progress is an independent association of top research scholars with the goal of assessing methods for improving the main institutions of modern societies. The IPSP has produced a report consisting of twenty-two chapters in three volumes that distills the research of these scholars and outlines what the best social science has to say about positive social change. Written in accessible language by scholars across the social sciences and humanities, these volumes assess the achievements of world (...) societies in past centuries, the current trends, the dangers that we are now facing, and the possible futures in the twenty-first century. It covers the main socio-economic, political, and cultural dimensions of social progress, global as well as regional issues, and the diversity of challenges and their interplay around the world. The authors offer a cautious optimistic conclusion: multiple ideas for social progress and better policies are already available and deserve to be tested and implemented. (shrink)

Attentional focus is an area that has garnered considerable attention in the sport psychology and motor performance literature. This is unsurprising given that attentional focus has been directly linked to performance outcomes and is susceptible to coaching input. While research has amassed supporting benefits of an external focus of attention on motor performance using verbal instruction, other studies have challenged the notion that an EFA is more beneficial than an internal focus of attention for sport-related performance. Further, it is (...) unclear what type of instructions may serve to direct an athlete to an EFA and, in particular, if coaching can utilize imagery to orient an athlete toward an EFA. In the present exploratory study, we evaluate the effectiveness of instruction to improve free-throw shooting performance with an emphasis on an EFA brought about by implementing techniques borrowed from the imagery literature. This was tested relative to an alternate approach with an IFA induced through an emphasis on technique, devised to more closely resemble input typical of coach-to-athlete instruction. Twenty-five male and female university basketball players completed both conditions in a fully counterbalanced within-subject design. Results confirmed that participants in the EFA imagery condition had greater shooting accuracy than in the IFA technique condition. The study provides initial evidence that EFA coaching can borrow from imagery techniques, though future research should elucidate the underlying mechanisms of the effect. (shrink)

In today’s society, it becomes increasingly important to assess which non-human and non-verbal beings possess consciousness. This review article aims to delineate criteria for consciousness especially in animals, while also taking into account intelligent artifacts. First, we circumscribe what we mean with “consciousness” and describe key features of subjective experience: qualitative richness, situatedness, intentionality and interpretation, integration and the combination of dynamic and stabilizing properties. We argue that consciousness has a biological function, which is to present the subject with (...) a multimodal, situational survey of the surrounding world and body, subserving complex decision-making and goal-directed behavior. This survey reflects the brain’s capacity for internal modeling of external events underlying changes in sensory state. Next, we follow an inside-out approach: how can the features of conscious experience, correlating to mechanisms inside the brain, be logically coupled to externally observable properties? Instead of proposing criteria that would each define a “hard” threshold for consciousness, we outline six indicators: goal-directed behavior and model-based learning; anatomic and physiological substrates for generating integrative multimodal representations; psychometrics and meta-cognition; episodic memory; susceptibility to illusions and multistable perception; and specific visuospatial behaviors. Rather than emphasizing a particular indicator as being decisive, we propose that the consistency amongst these indicators can serve to assess consciousness in particular species. The integration of scores on the various indicators yields an overall, graded criterion for consciousness, somewhat comparable to the Glasgow Coma Scale for unresponsive patients. When considering theoretically derived measures of consciousness, it is argued that their validity should not be assessed on the basis of a single quantifiable measure, but requires cross-examination across multiple pieces of evidence, including the indicators proposed here. Current intelligent machines, including deep learning neural networks and agile robots, are not indicated to be conscious yet. Instead of assessing machine consciousness by a brief Turing-type of test, evidence for it may gradually accumulate when we study machines ethologically and across time, considering multiple behaviors that require flexibility, improvisation, spontaneous problem-solving and the situational conspectus typically associated with conscious experience. (shrink)

Given that theoretical analysis and empirical validation is fundamental to any model, whether conceptual or formal, it is surprising that these two tools of scientific discovery are so often ignored in contemporary studies of communication. In this paper, we pursued the ideas of a) correcting and expanding the modeling approaches of linguistics, which are otherwise inapplicable, to the general case of hypermedia-based communication, and b) developing techniques for empirical validation of semiotic models, which are nowadays routinely used to explore (...) class='Hi'>internal mechanisms of complex systems, yet on a purely speculative basis. This study thus offers two experimentally tested substantive contributions: the formal representation of communication as the mutually-orienting behavior of coupled autonomous systems, and the mathematical interpretation of the semiosis of communication, which together offer a concrete and parsimonious understanding of diverse communication phenomena. (shrink)

Perception is a first-person internal sensation induced within the nervous system at the time of arrival of sensory stimuli from objects in the environment. Lack of access to the first-person properties has limited viewing perception as an emergent property and it is currently being studied using third-person observed findings from various levels. One feasible approach to understand its mechanism is to build a hypothesis for the specific conditions and required circuit features of the nodal points where the mechanistic operation (...) of perception take place for one type of sensation in one species and to verify it for the presence of comparable circuit properties for perceiving a different sensation in a different species. The present work explains visual perception in mammalian nervous system from a first-person frame of reference and provides explanations for the homogeneity of perception of visual stimuli above flicker fusion frequency, the perception of objects at locations different from their actual position, the smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movements, the perception of object borders, and perception of pressure phosphenes. Using results from temporal resolution studies and the known details of visual cortical circuitry, explanations are provided for (a) the perception of rapidly changing visual stimuli, (b) how the perception of objects occurs in the correct orientation even though, according to the third-person view, activity from the visual stimulus reaches the cortices in an inverted manner and (c) the functional significance of well-conserved columnar organization of the visual cortex. A comparable circuitry detected in a different nervous system in a remote species-the olfactory circuitry of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster-provides an opportunity to explore circuit functions using genetic manipulations, which, along with high-resolution microscopic techniques and lipid membrane interaction studies, will be able to verify the structure-function details of the presented mechanism of perception. (shrink)

In a recent article, Harold Noonan argues that application conditions and criteria of identity are not distinct from one another. This seems to threaten the standard approach to distinguishing sortals from adjectival terms. I propose that his observation, while correct, does not have this consequence. I present a simple scheme for distinguishing sortals from adjectival terms. I also propose an amended version of the standard canonical form of criteria of identity.

Peregrin and Svoboda propose an inferential and holistic approach to formalization, and a similar approach (to correctness) is considered by Brun. However, while the inferential criteria of adequacy explicitly endorsed by these authors may be holistic "in spirit," they are formulated for single formulas. More importantly, they allow the trivialization of equivalence and face problems when materially correct arguments come into play. Against this background, this paper tries to motivate holistic inferential criteria that compel us to distinguish (...) carefully between non-trivially equivalent formalizations as well as between materially and logically correct arguments on an inferential basis. (shrink)

This handsomely produced volume contains 22 contributions from international scholars, which were originally presented at the 2000 Conference of the International Society for Phenomenology, Fine Arts, & Aesthetics. The papers center around the theme of gardens and include a wide range of topics of interest to phenomenologists but also, perhaps, to gardeners with a philosophical bent. A sampling of topics: Leonardo's Annunciation Hortus Conclusus and its reflexive intent; hatha yoga--a phenomenological experience of nature; the Chinese attempt to miniaturize the world (...) in gardens; conflating and compressing time in commodified space and architecture; constructing the deconstructive landscape (the ruin aesthetic); and a phenomenological-anthropological aproach to Zen gardens. The volume is lightly indexed by name (mostly philosophers). Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com). (shrink)

One of the peculiar characteristics of the vast body of Jain commentarial literature is the primacy given to artha , meaning, over sūtra , the root text itself. It is the task of the commentator—or, in a pedagogical context, the teacher—to retrieve and explain a text’s true, hidden meaning, which often appears to stretch and even contradict its apparent meaning. This article examines the interpretive processes in one of the most important Jain commentaries on monastic discipline, the Bṛhatkalpabhāṣya attributed to (...) the sixth-century CE Śvetāmbara Jain exegete Saṅghadāsa. An examination of passages where the commentator claims to uncover the real—but sometimes less-than-apparent—meaning of monastic rules enables us to detect the interpretive moves involved and the underlying assumptions about the nature of text and the work of commentary. I argue that this commentarial tradition presupposes particular practices of memory, and a degree of internalizing the traditional hermeneutical methods, on the part of a monastic practitioner who wants to understand the text correctly and live according to its true meaning. (shrink)

This volume presents a collection of refereed papers reflecting the state of the art in the area of over-constrained systems. Besides 11 revised full papers, selected from the 24 submissions to the OCS workshop held in conjunction with the First International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, CP '95, held in Marseilles in September 1995, the book includes three comprehensive background papers of central importance for the workshop papers and the whole field. Also included is an introduction by (...) one of the volume editors together with a bibliography listing 243 entries. All in all this is a very useful reference book relevant for all researchers and practitioners interested in hierarchical, partial, and over-constrained systems. (shrink)

The purpose of this document is to consider possible industrial policy measures that could be contemplated by the South African Government to provide support for the export competitiveness of the country’s processed fruit products. It follows an earlier analysis by Don Ross, which argued for the conclusion that the industry meets key criteria for economically justifiable industrial policy assistance. That is, it offers a premium product that can be amplified in value by brand strengthening, can be positioned more advantageously (...) than at present in international value chains, and would benefit from an environment made more competitive by liberalization of international trade practices and reduction in management of input prices (chiefly tin plate and sugar). In short: the main factors now limiting the competitiveness of the industry’s exports derive neither from its product characteristics nor from independent market dynamics, but from exogenous constraints that are in principle correctible by policy. (shrink)

This article examines whether legal compromise on matters of justice amounts to a desirable response to the problem raised by reasonable pluralism in politics. Attitudes toward compromise are ambiguous: it is generally seen as much as a valuable technique for settling conflicts by mutual accommodation as a prejudicial concession of one's integrity. The article aims to resolve this paradox by distinguishing cases where compromises of principle cannot be tolerated from those in which they can be. By developing Ronald Dworkin's (...) distinction between internal and external compromises, the article shows that an internal compromise, that combines different conceptions of the same principle or of incommensurable and non‐distinct principles, constitutes at the most a second‐best alternative. Such a compromise fails to capture the core of our sense of law's intelligibility, justice, correct concept attribution and, finally, political integrity. By contrast, it is argued, external compromises of principle can be tolerated and may even be desirable in some cases. In fact, many conceptions of external compromise regard democracy as a paradigm of political compromise. This view is assessed at the end of the article and it is suggested that democratic procedures can be understood as compromises qua process: they select one of the conflicting views held during deliberation, rather than necessarily combining them into an externally compromised outcome. (shrink)

This is the third of three volumes containing a report from the International Panel on Social Progress. The IPSP is an independent association of top research scholars with the goal of assessing methods for improving the main institutions of modern societies. Written in accessible language by scholars across the social sciences and humanities, these volumes assess the achievements of world societies in past centuries, the current trends, the dangers that we are now facing, and the possible futures in the twenty-first (...) century. It covers the main socio-economic, political, and cultural dimensions of social progress, global as well as regional issues, and the diversity of challenges and their interplay around the world. This particular volume covers topics such as world cultures and religions, families, global health, education, and the contributions of social sciences to institutional change. (shrink)

The article underlines the significance of social rights as important constitutional rights of a human being and emphasises the peculiarities of their nature from the point of view of not only national, but also international law. The article presents an analysis of the constitutional doctrine of the protection of guarantees of social rights, which has been formulated by the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania in the course of considering the issues of reduction of social guarantees—pensions and remuneration, which (...) were determined by the economic crisis. In the Constitutional Court’s jurisprudence the personal right to social security has been construed in the most broad and comprehensive terms. The human rights and freedoms enshrined in the Constitution have been treated as constituting an integrated and harmonious system, and social rights have been interpreted not only as certain obligations of the state to the public, which inter alia are determined by the social purpose of the state, but also as a person’s individual rights, for which judicial defence is guaranteed. Such concept of the said rights has also been influenced by international law, inter alia the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. Social rights, while being an object of regulation of international law, have been forming the European doctrine of guarantees of these rights and have influenced the concept of these rights in national law. The main attention in the article is devoted to the analysis of the doctrine formulated in the Constitutional Court’s jurisprudence in relation to the correction (limitation) of social rights (payment of pensions and remuneration) under the conditions of economic crisis. In the article the period of formation of this doctrine is divided into two stages: the period of 2002–2006, when the Constitutional Court had to decide regarding the compliance of the legal acts whereby social guarantees had been constricted with the Constitution, and which was caused by the consequences of the so-called Russian economic crisis for the economic development of the state of Lithuania; and the period from 2009 to date, during which the Constitutional Court has been forming the constitutional doctrine of limitation of social rights, which was conditioned by the outcomes of the global economic crisis for the economy of the state of Lithuania. The article raises a question as to whether the constitutional doctrine being formed by the Constitutional Court in relation to the limitation of social rights under the conditions of economic crisis may be assessed as an independent one or whether it still remains to be a separate case of limitation of rights within the general doctrine of limitation of human rights. On the basis of the analysis of the Constitutional Court’s jurisprudence, a conclusion is drawn that the criteria established in the Constitutional Court’s doctrine of limitation of social rights under the conditions of economic crisis are even stricter than the universally recognised criteria for the limitation of human rights in the law of human rights, therefore, it is possible to assess the doctrine of limitation of social rights under the conditions of economic crisis, as formulated by the Constitutional Court during 2009–2012, which is the continuation of the previous doctrine, as an independent doctrine, the basis of which, undoubtedly, remains to be formed by the general principles of limitation of human rights recognised in the law of human rights. The article is not only confined to the analysis of the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania, it also provides examples of construction of the doctrine of social rights (inter alia those influenced by the economic crisis) by certain other constitutional courts. (shrink)

Each narration or text, as it informs about an event, situation or person in history, has a history that sheds light on both its formation and how it arrived to us. The illumination of this history is at least as important as the content analysis of the information. For this reason, it is necessary both to examine whether the source in which the information is given has survived to the present day as it was created by the author without being (...) exposed to any external intervention, and to analyze the narration in terms of reliability and indication within the integrity of the isnād-text. In that case, when the word “text criticism” is mentioned, an understanding of a specific criticism should come to mind, which includes both critical edition (scholarly editing) of the first source and the critique of the narration by making sound research in terms of isnād and literary criticism (naqd al-isnād wa-l-matn). Due to reasons such as the inability to follow a standard method, the limited number of the copies and/or the distance of the copies from the author in terms of history and commercial concerns, many classical works published with relative verification contain such errors require a re-examination. One of these works is Ibn Hibbān’s (d. 354/965) book al-Majrūhīn. In his work al-Majrūhīn, Ibn Hibbān divided the narrators into two groups according to their reliability and collected the ones that he determined as weak according to his opinion. In this work, he placed Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767) at the top of the list. First, he denounced Abū Ḥanīfa with the following expressions: Sahib al-ra’y, child of slaves, bicker, hypocrite, had little knowledge of hadith, a Murji’ī propagandist, a narrator who was blamed by imams. Then he tried to justify these claims by about thirty narrations from various salaf scholars. These narratives are completely different from the largely intellecutal discussions and criticisms of scholars such as al-Awza'i (d. 157/774), Ibn Abī Laylā (d. 148/765) and Ibn Abī Shayba (d. 235/849) on Abu Ḥanīfa and his school. The narrations compiled by Ibn Hibbān are display insulting and polemical narrations against Abu Ḥanīfa’s personality and reliability. In terms of being a source for later periods, it is important to examine and criticize these narratives in terms of the narration techniques. The al-jarḥ wa-l-taʿdīl is important part of the hadith science. al-Mejrūhīn, one of the leading works of this science is remarkable in many respects. According to this narration Abū Ḥanīfa Nuʿmān b. S̱ābit b. Zūtā b. Māh’ın (öl. 150/767) said, "If a man worships this mule to get closer to Allah, I see no harm in it." According to our analysis, there are the following determinations about the narrators in the chain of this narrative. Ibn Abī Mushir is unknown (majhūl), the narrator who is written as “Mahfūz b. Abī Savba” but his correct name is “Tawba” is matrūk. Ahmad b. al-Walīd al-Mahramī al-Karkhī is weak, and Yahyā b. Hamza, source person, is qadari who narrates from people with munkar al-hadith; but is also considered as a thiḳa narrator. As for Sa‘īd b. Abd al-Azīz, he has nothing to do with the reception and transmission of the narrative. In addition, there is also a break in the chain. First of all, what is expected from a basic work such as al-Majrūhīn, whose subject and purpose is purely a narrator analysis, is that the report in it should be acceptable, at least in terms of isnād. When the narrative in question, which is also included in earlier sources such as al-Fesewī (d. 277/890), is evaluated in terms of both the isnād and the text, one realizes the transformation of an expression circulating in the form of gossip against Abu Ḥanīfa in Damascus around the subject of ʾirjāʾ. ʾIrjāʾ was at the forefront of the heated debates in the second half of the second century into semā form in terms of isnād and text, besides, the word النعل/clog is transformed into البغل/mule. Apart from the weak points of the chain, Sa‘īd b. Abd al-Azīz, who has nothing to do with the reception and transmission of the narrative, has also been turned into the narrator/source of the report with the samā expression. Regardless of the purpose and the criteria of the narration technically, during the conversation with Sa‘īd, Yahyā b. Hamza’s sincere friend and teacher, a special speech in which a common report attributed to Abu Ḥanīfa was expressed, was transformed into Yahyâ’s samā‘ in the form of jazm. As a result, the word “shoe” or “clog” has evolved into mule. It would be a reductionist and over optimistic approach to assume that all this may have resulted from tashīf and tahrīf of the copyists. The narration we discussed is a typical example in terms of showing the effect of the conflict of ideas between Ahl al-Hadīth and Ahl ar-Ra’y on the narrations. Of course, this shoud be not regarded as the only example. (shrink)

How do our engagements with fictions and other products of the imagination compare to our experiences of the real world? Are the feelings we have about a novel's characters modelled on our thoughts about actual people? If it is wrong to feel pleasure over certain situations in real life, can it nonetheless be right to take pleasure in analogous scenarios represented in a fantasy or film? Should the desires we have for what goes on in a make-believe story cohere with (...) what we want to happen in the actual world? In Apt Imaginings, Jonathan Gilmore develops a new framework to pursue these questions, marshalling a wide range of research in aesthetics, the science of the emotions, moral philosophy, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and film and literary theory. Gilmore argues that, while there is a substantial empirical continuity in our feelings across art and life, the norms that govern the appropriateness of those responses across the divide are discontinuous. In this view, the evaluative criteria that determine the fit, correctness, or rationality of our emotions and desires for what is internal to a fiction can be contrary to those that govern our affective attitudes toward analogous things in the real world. In short, it can be right to embrace within a story what one would condemn in real life. The theory Gilmore defends in this volume helps to explain our complex and sometimes conflicted attitudes toward works of the imagination; challenges the popular view that fictions serve to refine our moral sensibilities; and exposes a kind of autonomy of the imagination that can render our responses to art immune to standard real-world epistemic, practical, and affective kinds of criticism. (shrink)

Publication date: 30 March 2017 Source: Author: Poonam Bala, Tanivir Kaur, Maninder Kaur This is an experimental study conducted on the upper primary school students in the district of S.B.S Nagar, Punjab. The study was conducted on the students of 6th and 7th class of an international School. Total of 100 students were enrolled for this experimental study who met the inclusion criteria and were randomly divided into 2 equal groups by simple randomization technique. They received either the (...) lecture method teaching or the smart class method teaching. For conducting the experiment, the investigator used pre-test and post-test comparison group design. For collection of data, a structured questionnaire and a structured teaching programme was used. t-test was used for analysis and interpretation of the data. The results of the study revealed that the lecture method of teaching was more effective as compared to a smart class method of teaching. (shrink)

Ethics designates a structured process by which important human values and meanings of life are understood and tackled. Therein, the ability to discuss openly and reflect on (aka deliberation) understandings of moral problems, on solutions to these problems, and to explore what a meaningful resolution could amount to is highly valued. However, the indicators of what constitutes a high-quality ethical deliberation remain vague and unclear. This article proposes and develops a pragmatist approach to evaluate the quality of deliberation. Deliberation features (...) three important moments: (1) broadening and deepening the understanding of the situation, (2) envisioning action scenarios, (3) coming to a judgment based on the comparative evaluation of scenarios. In this paper, we propose seven criteria to evaluate ethical deliberations: (1) collaborative diversity, (2) experiential literacy, (3) organization of experiences, (4) reflective capacity to instrumentalize the experiences of others, (5) interactional creativity, (6) openness of agents, (7) quality of the reformulation of scenarios. These criteria are explained and applied to the three moments of deliberation. Based on these criteria, three kinds of outcomes for deliberations are identified and discussed: good ethical deliberations, partial ethical deliberations, bad ethical deliberations. Our proposal will guide researchers and practitioners interested in the evaluation of the quality of ethical deliberations. It provides a reference tool that allows them to identify the possible limitations of a deliberation and to implement actions aimed at correcting these limitations in order to achieve the desired qualitative objectives. (shrink)

Although the use of military force for humanitarian ends seems utterly divorced from the use of such force to combat terrorism, both uses answer to similar descriptions. Both appear to encourage nations that are not necessarily themselves under attack to set aside the reigning conventions of national sovereignty and territorial integrity for the overriding purposes of international law enforcement and protection of vulnerable noncombatants. Both involve offensive rather than purely defensive uses of military force. Both answer to criteria of (...) justification that can be derived more readily from the normative moral principles of the classical just war tradition than from purely descriptive revisions of the 'legalist paradigm' in international relations, because the latter is deeply wedded by precedent to notions of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and a purely defensive use of military force. Most significantly, the justification for both kinds of military action depends essentially upon a notion of 'the international community' that is inchoate and urgently in need of rigorous reformulation. In this paper, I attempt to formulate criteria for the justifiable use of military force for these non-defensive purposes, with attention to the nuances of internationalism that several of the resulting criteria entail. Challenges to the de facto role of the United Nations as the sole authoritative representative of this community, and alternatives to its authority in legitimating the use of military force for purposes of international law enforcement, are considered. (shrink)

This work compares Autometrics with dual penalization techniques such as minimax concave penalty and smoothly clipped absolute deviation under asymmetric error distributions such as exponential, gamma, and Frechet with varying sample sizes as well as predictors. Comprehensive simulations, based on a wide variety of scenarios, reveal that the methods considered show improved performance for increased sample size. In the case of low multicollinearity, these methods show good performance in terms of potency, but in gauge, shrinkage methods collapse, and higher gauge (...) leads to overspecification of the models. High levels of multicollinearity adversely affect the performance of Autometrics. In contrast, shrinkage methods are robust in presence of high multicollinearity in terms of potency, but they tend to select a massive set of irrelevant variables. Moreover, we find that expanding the data mitigates the adverse impact of high multicollinearity on Autometrics rapidly and gradually corrects the gauge of shrinkage methods. For empirical application, we take the gold prices data spanning from 1981 to 2020. While comparing the forecasting performance of all selected methods, we divide the data into two parts: data over 1981–2010 are taken as training data, and those over 2011–2020 are used as testing data. All methods are trained for the training data and then are assessed for performance through the testing data. Based on a root-mean-square error and mean absolute error, Autometrics remain the best in capturing the gold prices trend and producing better forecasts than MCP and SCAD. (shrink)

Current strategies to address global inequities in access to life-saving vaccines use averaged national income data to determine eligibility. While largely successful in the lowest income countries, we argue that this approach could lead to significant inefficiencies from the standpoint of justice if applied to middle-income countries, where income inequalities are large and lead to national averages that obscure truly needy populations. Instead, we suggest alternative indicators more sensitive to social justice concerns that merit consideration by policy-makers developing new initiatives (...) to redress health inequities in middle-income countries. (shrink)

Following W.V. Quine’s lead, many metaphysicians consider ontology to be concerned primarily with existential questions of the form, “What is there?”. Moreover, if the position advanced by Rudolf Carnap, in his seminal essay, “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology ”, is correct, then many of these existential ontological questions ought to be classified as either trivially answerable or as “pseudo-questions”. One may justifiably wonder, however, whether the Quinean and Carnapian perspective on ontology really does justice to many of the most central concerns (...) of this discipline. This chapter argues, by considering a particular ontological dispute between two different kinds of trope theorists, that some of the most interesting and important debates which properly belong to the study of being, whether we call it “metaphysics” or “ ontology ”, do not concern existential questions at all; rather, such disputes in some cases focus on non-existential disagreements over questions of fundamentality. (shrink)

In the original publication of the article, the name “Tamsin Phillipa Paige” has been incorrectly cited throughout the article as “Tasmin Phillipa Page”. The correct name should read as Tamsin Phillipa Paige.

Employee is the main resource for organization. Recently, there were many concerns of staff resignation within industries. High staff turnovers cause increase of costs of hiring workforces. Owing this issue, “Assessment of Factor of Employee’s Turnover” was proposed for research with the objective of examination of factors causing staff resignation from MVi. In total 26 staff both women and men who resigned 2016 and 2017 was selected for interview. Quantitative data was used. Three main steps were done including research questionnaires (...) and material development, sampling technique and criteria and data analysis and reporting. There were four main parts: the degree of staff satisfaction of each of the variables (1 to 12), the correlation between each of variable (1 to 12) with overall satisfaction, the causes of staff resign of the variable (13-27) and the correlation between each of the staff resign causes (variable 13 to 27). All those data have been transformed into non-parameter with the Spearmen Rho. MVi staff members were appreciated working with MVi. The satisfaction of each variable was that the staff scored high for most factors like staff leave, communication with colleagues, staff capacity development opportunities, and roles and responsibilities. Former staff who worked in 2016 and 2017 was most appreciated with the factors above. Three factors scored by respondents were very low in comparison with other factors. Those are work overload, job security, and salary. All those factors were located between score 3 (neutral and score 4 (satisfied). Among 12 satisfaction variables, three of them were most significantly positively related to staff motivation. For internal factors, the average score was 3.19 which represents mostly true of the statement above. The variables which were significantly related to staff resignation were communication with superiors, finding a higher position with new agencies better salaries, and benefits from the new agency. The recommendations were produced including awarding for staff, review salary scale, tasks, maintaining staff. Qualitative research to explore what job security, salary, and work-overloads are not significantly related to staff satisfaction should be done. Qualitative research on factors of staff resign should be done. (shrink)

Design problems in structural engineering are often modeled as differential equations. These problems are posed as initial or boundary value problems with several possible variations in structural designs. In this paper, we have derived a mathematical model that represents different structures of beam-columns by varying axial load with or without internal forces including bending rigidity. We have also developed a novel solver, the LeNN-NM algorithm, which consists of weighted Legendre polynomials, and a single path following optimizer, the Nelder–Mead algorithm. (...) To evaluate the performance of our solver, we have considered three design problems representing beam-columns. The values of performance indicators, MAD, TIC, NSE, and ENSE, are calculated for a hundred simulations. The outcome of our statistical analysis points to the superiority of the LeNN-NM algorithm. Graphical illustrations are presented to further elaborate on our claims. (shrink)

This study empirically examined the views of Certified Internal Auditors (CIAs) concerning the role of Code of Ethics for members of the Institute of Internal Auditors. It is a continuation of an earlier study which examined the usefulness of the Code to CIAs. Among the questions asked were what is the primary reason for the Code of Ethics, how useful is it, have you used it, should more enforcement actions be taken against members who violate the Code, and (...) what are the legal and moral responsibilities of the CIA to report serious ethical violations, e.g., environmental pollution, to outsiders when top management and the board of directors are aware of the matter but are not doing anything to correct it. The results indicate strong support for the Code, its enforcement, and use as an instrument to encourage the internal flow of ethical behavior by embers and others. (shrink)

Notions of human rights as enshrined in international law have become the “idea of our time”; a “dominant moral narrative by which world politics” is organized; and a powerful “discourse of public persuasion.”1 With the rise of human rights discourse, we need to ask, how do protagonists make human rights claims? What sort of resources, techniques, and strategies do they use in order to publicize information about human rights abuses and stipulations set out in international law? With the democratization of (...) mapping practices, various individuals, organizations, and governments are increasingly using maps in order to put forth certain social and political claims. This article draws on the sociology of knowledge, science studies, critical cartography, cultural studies, and anthropological studies of law in order to analyze how various international, Palestinian, and Israeli organizations design maps of the West Bank Barrier in accord with assumptions embedded within international law as part of their political and new media activism. Qualitative sociological methods, such as in-depth interviewing, ethnography, and the collection of cartographic material pertaining to the West Bank Barrier, provide the empirical tools to do so. The maps examined here exemplify how universalistic notions of international law and human rights become a powerful rhetorical tool to make various and often incommensurable social and political claims across different maps. At the same time, international human rights law, rather than dictating local mapping practices, becomes inevitably “vernacularized” and combined with local understandings, cultural preferences, and political concerns. (shrink)

Near the end of the last century, some legal philosophers adapted the so called causal theories of reference to solve internal problems in legal theory. Among those philosophers, Nicos Stavropoulos adjusted Hilary Putnam’s semantic externalism claiming it as a better philosophical view than legal positivism defended by Herbert Hart. According to him, what determines the correct application of a legal rule must be determined by the objects themselves. In that case, what determines the reference of legal terms is an (...) issue to be solved by the best theory developed. However, this is not the case necessarily: Hart’s model can reach to the same conclusions as an externalist adjustment of law. Furthermore, the epistemic criteria required by Putnam to deal with value judgements are also acceptable in a positivist model. This paper presents the central thesis of Putnam’s semantic externalism, with Stavropoulos adaptations to law, and defends that Hart’s approach to deal with legal rules and Putnam’s approach to deal with language rules can converge. (shrink)