This paper investigates Augustine’s Letter 111 to expose the Bishop of Hippo’s stand on the problem of violent sexual abuse perpetrated on Catholic nuns and its consequence on their integrity. Having presented the general historical and sociopolitical context in which the letter was written, it surveys the question of violence in Augustine’s epistolary in general. The analysis of the final section of the Letter 111 shows that according to Augustine, despite the defloration of their virginity, raped holy women do not (...) lose their chastity so long as in their mind, they did not consent to lust. (shrink)

Augustine’s teaching on wealth and poverty, on the relations between the poor and the rich has been extensively studied in the past few decades. However, much attention has not been given to his considerations on the prosperity of the wicked and the tendency of the faithful to serve God for an immediate material reward. In this paper, I examine the bishop of Hippo’s preaching on this question. Predominantly, in his Sermones ad populum and Enarrationes in Psalmos, Augustine constantly calls his (...) flock to acknowledge the author of prosperity and of all good things as the Supreme Good, and to prefer him to all the ephemerous possessions they may have in this world. Above all, he encourages the faithful to despise the prosperity of the wicked which is only apparent and to hope for God himself their reward for serving him. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe the potential role laypersons on ethics committees can play in ensuring community concerns are addressed in the design and implementation of genomic research. We draw inferences from the outcome of an empirical study of the impact of training of laypersons to address community engagement issues in ethics review of research protocol. While this paper does not advocate a particular solution, it describes the importance of community engagement in genomic research, the current limitations there are in (...) engaging communities in the design of these research projects and how communities can be indirectly engaged in the design and implementation of genomic research through the engagement of laypersons on ethics committees. However, to ensure that these laypersons can play this role, their capacity needs to be built to play this role appropriately. There is evidence to show that where resources are invested in building the capacity of laypersons to play their role as community ‘watchdogs’ in research, they play this role aptly. Community engagement is important in genomic research as genomic researchers will increasingly require community perspectives in critical ethics decision making. (shrink)

The novel coronavirus has not only brought along disruptions to daily socio-economic activities, but sickness and deaths due to its high contagion. With no widely acceptable pharmaceutical cure, the best form of prevention may be precautionary measures which will guide against infections and curb the spread of the disease. This study explored the relationship between COVID-19 knowledge, risk perception, and precautionary behavior among Nigerians. The study also sought to determine whether this relationship differed for men and women. A web-based cross-sectional (...) design approach was used to recruit 1,554 participants from all geopolitical zones in Nigeria, through social media platforms using a snowball sampling technique. Participants responded to web-based survey forms comprising demographic questions and adapted versions of the Ebola knowledge scale, SARS risk perception scale, and precautionary behavior scale. Moderated mediation analysis of the data showed that risk perception mediated the association between COVID-19 knowledge and precautionary behavior and this indirect effect was in turn moderated by gender. Results indicate that having adequate knowledge of COVID-19 was linked to higher involvement in precautionary behavior through risk perception for females but not for males. It was also noted that awareness campaigns and psychological intervention strategies on COVID-19 related activities may be particularly important for males more than females. Drawing from the health belief model, we recommend that COVID-19 awareness campaigns should target raising more awareness of the risks associated with the infection to make individuals engage more in precautionary behaviors. (shrink)

Sommaire : Augustin est connu pour son esprit de service qui le porte à produire des écrits en réponse aux requêtes d’amis, de connaissances ou même de personnes étrangères qui sollicitent son aide. En 410, il reçoit une lettre (ep. 117) de Carthage, de la part de Dioscorus, jeune homme d’origine grecque, qui lui envoie de nombreuses questions sur les dialogues de Cicéron. Sa recherche est motivée par la crainte de paraître ignorant devant ceux qui lui poseraient des questions sur (...) ces sujets de retour dans sa patrie. Augustin saisit l’occasion pour le détourner des ambitions de la vaine gloire et lui montre, en exposant sa connaissance des écoles philosophiques antiques, qu’il ne sert à rien de s’imbiber des opinions des philosophes quand on ne recherche pas dans l’humilité la vérité elle-même. Cet article présente et analyse l’exposé d’Augustin des théories et des contradictions de ces philosophies antiques, et montre les recours aux références bibliques presque inaperçues présentes dans la lettre. (shrink)

This paper is about the contribution of Saint Augustine to the reform of the Catholic Church in North Africa, through his ministry of preaching. When he was still a priest at Hippo, Augustine waged a forceful and successful war against some pagan practices which had gradually crept into the Church. The common practice of celebrating the dead in the Roman world was being applied to the Saints of the Church and Christians were celebrating their memory by getting drunk. The prohibition (...) of such practices by the authority of the Church met with the resistance of the faithful, so Augustine decided to act precisely through the power of the Word he proclaimed to his flock. In his Letter 29 addressed to Alypius the Bishop of Thagaste, he narrates how he convinced the faithful to stop the celebration of the feast called Laetitia on the feast day of Saint Leontius. After sketching the background of the devotion to the Saints in North Africa, our study examines the line of Augustine’s argumentation that led to the success of this preaching, and hence shows how he contributed to the reform of the Church of his day. (shrink)

Using the matched wife fertility intention. The analysis used logistic regression models for predicting the effects of selected socioeconomic background characteristics on a couples fertility intention was associated with age, education, place of residence, frequency of television-watching and number of living children. Therefore, programme interventions aimed at promoting fertility reduction in Nigeria should convey fertility regulation messages to both husbands and wives.

In recent years, the work of organizations in the area of digitization has intensified significantly. This trend is also evident in the field of recruitment where job application tracking systems (ATS) have been developed to allow job advertisements to be published online. However, recent studies have shown that recruiting in most organizations is not inclusive, being subject to human biases and prejudices. Most discrimination activities appear early but subtly in the hiring process, for instance, exclusive phrasing in job advertisement discourages (...) qualified applicants from minority groups from applying. The existing works are limited to analyzing, categorizing and highlighting the occurrence of bias in the recruitment process. In this paper, we go beyond this and develop machine learning models for identifying and classifying biased and discriminatory language in job descriptions. We develop and evaluate a machine learning system for identifying five major categories of biased and discriminatory language in job advertisements, i.e., masculine-coded, feminine-coded, exclusive, LGBTQ-coded, demographic and racial language. We utilized the combination of linguistic features with recent state-of-the-art word embeddings representations as input features for various machine learning classifiers. Our results show that the machine learning classifiers were able to identify all the five categories of biased and discriminatory language with a decent accuracy. The Random Forest classifier with FastText word embeddings achieved the best performance with tenfolds cross-validation. Our system directly addresses the bias in the attraction phase of hiring by identifying and classifying biased and discriminatory language and thus encouraging recruiters to write more inclusive job advertisements. (shrink)

Job seekers find themselves increasingly duped and misled by fraudulent job advertisements, posing a threat to their privacy, security and well-being. There is a clear need for solutions that can protect innocent job seekers. Existing approaches to detecting fraudulent jobs do not scale well, function like a black-box, and lack interpretability, which is essential to guide applicants’ decision-making. Moreover, commonly used lexical features may be insufficient as the representation does not capture contextual semantics of the underlying document. Hence, this paper (...) explores to what extent different categorizations of fraudulent jobs can be classified. In addition, this paper seeks to find what type of features are most relevant in classifying the type of fraudulent job. In this paper, we develop and validate a machine learning system for identifying identity theft, corporate identity theft and multi-level marketing amongst fraudulent job advertisements. We utilized four classes of features: empirical rule set-based features, bag-of-word models, most recent state-of-the-art word embeddings and transformer models for various machine learning classifiers. The machine learning models were validated by evaluating them on a publicly available job description dataset. Our results indicate that the word embeddings and transformer-based features consistently outperformed the handcrafted rule-set based features class. Ultimately, a Gradient Boosting classifier with a combination of empirical rule-set based features, parts-of-speech tags and bag-of-words vectors achieved the best performance with an F1-score of 0.88. (shrink)

Background Informed consent prior to nursing care procedures is an established principle which acknowledges the right of the patient to authorise what is done to him or her; consent prior to nursing care should not be assumed. Nursing care procedures have the potential to be unwanted by the patient and hence require an appropriate form of authorisation that takes into consideration the relationship between the nurse and patient and the ongoing nature of care delivery. Research question How do nurses obtain (...) consent from patients prior to nursing care?. Design Critical incident technique and the collection of critical happenings. Participants 17 participants who were all qualified nurses took part in in-depth interviews Ethical considerations Ethical approval was obtained from the university ethics committee. Findings Information giving is a key component prior to nursing care procedures. Nurses provide information to patients as a routine aspect of care delivery, and do so even when the patient is unable to communicate themselves. Whilst some participants described how information giving might be rushed or overlooked at times, it is clearly an established part of nursing care and is provided to ensure the patient knows what to expect when care is delivered. What is less clear is the extent to which information is given in order to seek the consent – rather than merely inform the patient – about nursing care. Conclusion Implied consent is often an appropriate way in which consent is obtained prior to nursing care procedures. It takes into account the ongoing care provision and the relationship that exists between the nurse and patient. However implied consent should not be assumed. Nurses need to ensure that information is given not only to inform the patient about a procedure but to enable the patient to give his or her consent and to find an alternative way forward if the patient withholds their consent. (shrink)

Corporate governance is often split between rule-based and principle-based approaches to regulation in different institutional contexts. This split is often informed by the types of institutional configurations, their strengths, and the complementarities within them. This approach to corporate governance regulation is mostly discussed in the context of developed economies and their regulatory demands. However, in developing and weak market economies, such as in Sub-Saharan Africa, there is no such explicit split and the debates on such contexts in the comparative corporate (...) governance literature have been meagre. Nonetheless, there are sparks of good corporate governance practices in the region. Drawing from institutional theory and a case study of a largest economy, we explore the appropriateness or suitability of corporate governance regulatory frameworks in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our findings suggest that Nigeria needs an integrated system that combines elements of both rule-based and principle-based regulation, supported by a multi-stakeholder co-regulation strategy. This paper departs from the mainstream rule-based and principle-based categorisations by forging ahead new perspectives on corporate governance regulation, especially in weak market economies. (shrink)

This paper attempts to critique the existential philosophy of Martin Buber’s theory of the “I-Thou” using the Yoruba concept of okun omo iya. The need for the realization of a sustainable environment has been a point of focus for researchers, scholars, and government policy makers. The reason for this realization is not far-fetched. According to a record from World Health Organisation (WHO), one-quarter of all deaths worldwide are attributed to over-exploitation and reckless usage of the environment. This undoubtedly has caused (...) several human-induced disasters such as floods. The reckless usage and abuse of the environment is predicated on the domineering tendency of humans towards the environment. Martin Buber, in his existentialist philosophy, argues that humans should treat their relations as “I-Thou” (as subjects) and not as “I-It” (as objects). It follows that humans must be considerate in relating with each other such that fellow humans should not be treated as a means to an end, rather as ends in themselves. Simply put, fellow humans should not be seen as objects that others can either control, dominate, or subdue. However, Buber’s existentialist philosophy is human-centered, as it excludes the non-human entities and as well, failed to explain the relationship that should exist between humans and non-human entities. Hence, the Yoruba concept of okun omo iya will be used as a paradigm to remodel and re-configure the existentialist philosophy of Buber in a way that is environmentally inclusive. (shrink)

Bilişsel Din Bilimi (CSR), dini inanç ve uygulamaların nedensel açıklamalarını sağlamayı amaçlayan din araştırmalarına bilimsel bir yaklaşımdır. CSR savunucuları, insan zihninin doğal özelliklerini ve nasıl işlediğini açıklayarak dini inançların oluşumu, kabulü, aktarımı ve yaygınlığı sürecini açıklamaya çalışırlar. Tüm insan kültürlerinde var olan ve son on yılda birçok CSR akademisyeninin dikkatini çeken dini inançlardan biri de öbür dünyaya olan inançtır. CSR araştırmacılarına göre, bu inanç, insan zihninin doğal yapılarına dayanmaktadır. Ölümden sonraki hayata olan inancı, zihinsel araçların işleyişinden kaynaklanan, yansıtıcı olmayan veya (...) sezgisel bir inanç olarak görürler. Ölümden sonra hayata inancın oluşumunu, gelişimini, yayılmasını ve aktarılmasını açıklamak için çeşitli teoriler önerdiler. Ancak bu teoriler arasında, iki teori daha geniş kabul görmüştür, sezgisel düalizm teorisi ve simülasyon kısıtlama teorisi. Sezgisel düalizm teorisi, tüm insanların iki zihinsel araca sahip olduğunu söyler: Sezgisel Biyoloji ve Sezgisel Psikoloji. Sezgisel Biyoloji, ölü bir kişinin karşısına geçip hareket edemediği için artık hayatta olmadığına inanmamızı sağlar. Sezgisel Psikoloji, ölü kişiye otomatik olarak görünmez özellikleri (arzular, düşünceler, inançlar ve duygular gibi) atfetmeye devam eder. Yukarıdaki iki zihinsel aracın aynı anda işleyişi, insan zihnini ölü kişinin bir kısmının önemsiz olduğuna ve fiziksel ölümden sonra kaldığına inandırır. Simülasyon kısıtlama teorisi, tüm insanların çevreden gelen bilgileri işlemek ve dini inançlar edinmek için zihinsel araçlara sahip olduğunu söyler. Zihinsel araçların hiçbiri, kişinin arzularının, düşüncelerinin, inançlarının ve duygularının var olmadığını hayal edemez veya simüle edemez. Bu nedenle ölü kişinin karşısındaki insan zihni, fiziksel ölümünü kolayca hayal etmesine rağmen, kişinin başka bir bölümünün (düşünceler, arzular vb.) Varlığına inanmaya devam eder. Bu teorilerin her ikisi de, öbür dünyaya inancın oluşumunu açıklamada zorluklar ve sınırlamalarla karşı karşıya görünüyor. Bunlar arasında nedensel açıklama yapamama, ölümden sonraki hayata olan inancın doğal ve rasyonel temelleri arasındaki ayrım eksikliği ve öbür dünya inancının doğaüstü temellerini göz ardı etme yer alır. İki teoriden hiçbiri öbür dünyaya inancın oluşumu için yeterli nedensel açıklama sağlamıyor gibi görünmektedir. Her iki teori de zihinsel araçların nasıl işlediğine bağlı olarak öbür dünya inançlarının oluşumu hakkında olası bir hikaye sunmaya çalışır. Ölümden sonraki hayata inanmaya yol açan sürecin yalnızca makul bir hikayesini sunarlar. Bu iki teorinin sunduğu şey, insan zihninin ve araçlarının ve bunların nasıl işlediğinin bir açıklamasıdır (nedensel açıklama değil). Bu, kendi başına, bu aletlerin öbür dünyaya bir inanç ürettiğini açıklamaz. Dolayısıyla ahirete olan inancın zihinsel araçların işleyişinin bir sonucu olduğu iddiası, zihinsel araçlar ile bu inanç arasında nedensel bir ilişki gerektirir. Bu iki teoriden hiçbiri bu nedensel ilişkiyi açıklayamaz ve yalnızca aralarındaki ilişkinin makul bir hikayesini açıklarlar. Dahası, dini inancın rasyonel temelleri ile dini inancın doğal temelleri arasındaki ayrım, ahirete inanmak veya onunla ilişkili bilişsel mekanizmaları tanımlamak için doğal bir köken bulmanın hiçbir şekilde bu inancı reddetmek veya itibarını sarsmak anlamına gelmediğini göstermektedir. Ahirete olan inancın doğal kökenleri hakkındaki bilişsel teoriler bize bu inancın rasyonel mi irrasyonel mi olduğunu gösteremez. Bu açıklamalar ancak (eğer yapabilirlerse) bize bu inancın oluşumunun ve yaygınlığının doğal köklerini gösterebilir. Ayrıca Dinsel inanç karmaşık bir kavramdır. Birincisi, doğal bir kavramdır, bu anlamda insan doğasına dayanır ve insanın bilişsel sistemleri ve zihinsel araçlarıyla ilgilidir. İkincisi, kültürel ve sosyal bir kavramdır, bu anlamda hem kültürel ve sosyal değişimden etkilenir hem de onu etkiler. Üçüncüsü, doğaüstü bir kavramdır, bu anlamda hem vahiy hem de kehanet ve insanın maddi olmayan yönüyle derinden bağlantılıdır. Öbür dünyaya inanç, her üç düzeyde açıklamayı gerektiriyor gibi görünüyor. (shrink)

Recent military coups in West Africa have put the continent’s democratisation itself into question. In some places, for the moment, these coups appear to have popular backing. Nigeria, where radicalism is firmly rooted in democratic values and a human-rights framework, the radical grassroots opposition to the Buhari government’s creeping authoritarianism lies drenched in blood. The roots of this development go back to the history of Nigeria’s radicalism in the twentieth century. Much has appeared on the global 1968 recently, including that (...) of Africa. 1970s/1980s-style radicalism is reappearing today with Omoyele Sowore’s 2018 presidential candidacy, with the African Action Congress party, the #EndSARS protests and the tragic Lekki Toll Gate massacre (2020) in Nigeria. The shift towards radicalism is palpable with protest music such as Falz’s This is Nigeria, and Burna Boy’s Monsters you Made, both explicitly targeting neocolonialism and police brutality. Contrary to Achille Mbembe’s sweeping dismissal of African radicalism, the movement with very deep roots under study is meaningful once again, and is gathering momentum in West Africa’s giant polity. This article applies Walter Benjamin’s and also Nigerian radical thinkers’ conceptualisation of political, social and artistic radicalism, while it frames the Nigerian version via the movement’s history, in which marxisant theory and praxis, feminism, human rights and pro-democracy movements interact with emancipatory strands of Islam, Christianity, Igbo Judaism, and animism. In the context of Nigerian radicalism, even expressly pro-capitalist art theory performs a radical social function by stressing the African’s right to make universal statements (Olu Oguibe) in its de facto defiance of the neo-colony. As these different strands of protest meet, ethnic uprisings (amongst them IPOB) find ways to establish common cause with social radicalism, posing a composite threat to the prebendalist oligarchy that rules and oppresses the country via a militarised neoliberalism. (shrink)

There is a ‘catch 22’ situation about applying coercion in psychiatric care. Autonomous choices undeniably are rights of patients. However, emphasizing rights for a mentally-ill patient could jeopardize the chances of the patient receiving care or endanger the public. Conversely, the beneficial effects of coercion are difficult to predict. Thus, applying coercion in psychiatric care requires delicate balancing of individual-rights, individual well-being and public safety, which has not been achieved by current frameworks. Two current frameworks may be distinguished: the civil (...) liberty approach and the Stone model. Both frameworks are restrictive, and not respectful of human dignity. In a civil liberty approach, individuals who are severely mentally-ill but not dangerous would be denied care because they do not meet the dangerousness threshold or because the use of coercion will not lead to rebirthing of autonomy. This is unsatisfactory. Albeit involuntary interventions such as talk therapies, peer-support etc., may not always lead to rebirthing of autonomy or free patients from mental illness; they can however help to maintain the dignity of each mentally ill patient. In place of these frameworks, this study proposes a new ethical framework for applying coercion in psychiatric care that is respectful of human dignity. Specifically, it draws on insights from the African ethico-cultural system by using the Yoruba concept Omo-olu-iwabi to develop this new framework. This way, the study shows that only a more respectful approach for applying coercion in psychiatric care can lead to the careful balancing of the competing interests of individual's rights, individual's well-being and public safety. (shrink)

While the principles of reproductive justice are generally agreed upon in progressive reproductive political circles, other theoretical frameworks such as reparative justice can further foster the goals of the movement. In the literature, however, reparative justice has been insufficiently explored as it relates to reproductive injustice. My concern in this essay is therefore the development of conceptual architecture for understanding reproductive justice as reparative in nature. A reparative approach to reproductive ethics importantly takes up the demand to situate reproduction within (...) ongoing historical and sociopolitical contexts. It makes transparent the harms generated by an oppressive social order and the depths to which conditions must change for reproductive justice to emerge. To construct the relationship between reparative and reproductive justice, I employ Olúfemi Táíwò’s constructivist view of reparations as an ongoing, generative, and ultimately world-building project. For, if reproductive justice is about developing enabling conditions wherein folks can control their birthing options and parent in safe and healthy environments, then a constructivist reparative approach is necessary—one which takes seriously the accumulative harms of history and their relation to transforming social structures in the present. (shrink)

Over the past decade, sexual rumor spreading, slut-shaming, and homophobic labeling have become central examples of bullying among young women. This article examines the role these practices— what adults increasingly call “bullying” and what girls often call “drama”— play in girls’ gendering processes. Through interviews with 54 class and racially diverse late adolescent girls, I explore the content and functions of “sexual drama.” All participants had experiences with this kind of conflict, and nearly a third had been the subject of (...) other girls’ rumors about their own sexual actions and/or orientations. Their accounts indicate that sexual drama offers girls a socially acceptable site for making claims to, and sense of, gendered sexuality in adolescence. While they reproduce inequality through these practices, sexual drama is also a resource for girls—one that is made useful through the institutional constraints of their high schools, which reinforce traditional gender norms and limit sexuality information. (shrink)

Tom 1. Metafilosofii︠a︡, ontologii︠a︡, gnoseologii︠a︡, filosofii︠a︡ i metodologii︠a︡ nauki --.

Historical dynamics around feminism, race, and rape discouraged extensive early Black involvement in anti-rape work in the United States. In Los Angeles, concern among women of color in the movement and a state initiative to fund poorly served areas converged to produce two new Black rape crisis centers in the mid-1980s. Ironically, state funding, an otherwise conservative influence on the anti-rape movement, has facilitated the progressive goal of expanding racial and ethnic diversity in the Los Angeles anti-rape movement. Racially homogeneous (...) organizations contributed more to diversifying the movement than integration within organizations. Despite differences in political perspective, women from older feminist groups and the new community-oriented centers now successfully work in coalition. (shrink)

A promise to do some action seems to create a binding obligation to do that action. And yet, paradoxically, an obligation seems not to be a fact that we can create or bring into existence; we can create an obligation only by creating or bringing into existence something else. The only way to avoid the paradox is to show that the act of promising creates something other than an obligation, which nonetheless binds us to perform the action in question. After (...) considering and rejecting various options such as the promisee's expectation and the promisor's resolve, Prichard locates the bindingness of a promise in a prior general promise, which allows the noises we make when promising to generate an obligation to perform the promised action. (shrink)

The term “lean in” was popularized by Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, via her #1 Best Seller encouraging women to defy their fears and dare to be leaders in their fields. She received criticism because although admitting to external barriers contributing to the gender gap in leadership, the scope of her book focused on the internal shortcomings of women. She asserted that women are hindered by barriers that exist within themselves, and provided practical tips, backed by research, to equip women with (...) strategies to proactively progress in the workplace instead of shying away. Sandberg is not the first to raise concern about gender inequality. Other women in history like Susan B. Anthony and Maggie Lena Walker also challenged lopsided gender roles through their words and actions. Using the critical biography methodology, this paper explores these women’s experiences, philosophies and contributions, reflects on Sandberg’s insight, and develops a framework, based on the theory of planned behavior as well as the ethical principles of utilitarianism and corporate social responsibility, that links internal factors, organizational external factors, and societal external factors to intentions to lean in and leaning in behavior. Thus, via critical biography, this paper examines both internal and external factors, showing how they are linked, and how they may impact leaning in intentions and behavior. The paper also discusses how leaning in may influence both individual and gender mobility for women, and ultimately, increased gender equality. (shrink)

After examining the problem that gratuitous suffering poses for Nietzsche's notion of life affirmation, I mount a skeptical response to this problem on Nietzsche's behalf. I then consider an orthogonal objection to Nietzschean life affirmation, which argues that the need to justify life is symptomatic of life denial and show how strengthening the skeptical defense sidesteps this worry. Nietzsche's skepticism about our all‐too‐human, epistemic position thus aids his project of life affirmation in two ways. First, it suggests that we are (...) unable to determine reliably whether a given instance of suffering is, in fact, gratuitous. Second, it provides a corrective to the moralistic need to redeem life, showing that all attempts to justify life as a whole are epistemically fraught. Before concluding, I examine Nietzsche's reasons for advancing such an epistemological argument and suggest how we might approach life affirmation in nonrational terms. (shrink)

An historical survey of Thomas Kuhn's 1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, charting the development of this influential work throughout Kuhn's career and exploring the continuing impact of Kuhn on the philosophy of science.

Today, the Internet is a rich source of study materials, and Google Scholar offers free access to a large number of scientific articles. There are excellent research publications available in many more databases. Students have the option of easily copying the material. Reusing, paraphrasing, patchwriting, and ghostwriting without citing the original documents are plagiarism. Plagiarism is increasing in academics, particularly in research. This study aims to study the awareness of plagiarism and to analyze the reasons for plagiarism. The study samples (...) are the student teachers in India. For this study, we used a survey method, and the author prepared a questionnaire to collect data from the student teachers. Study respondents are the student teachers of the Regional Institute of Education Mysore; Purposive sampling was used to select samples. The total number of study respondents is 207. The findings of the study revealed that over 70 per cent of respondents mentioned reasons for plagiarism as lack of relevant literature studying, lack of preparation and time, difficulty checking every piece of work, do not know the manual citation style, lack of knowledge about bibliographic management software and also they stated that getting easily available materials on the internet is also a reason for plagiarism. The study recommends that teachers teach or conduct awareness programs on plagiarism, avoiding plagiarism, citation style, and software. (shrink)

The expertise defense is the best-known response by armchair philosophers to the challenge posed by experimental philosophers regarding the trustworthiness of intuitions. In a series of recent experiments, Experimental philosophers have recently focused on professional philosophers, claiming that, contrary to what the expertise defense assumes, philosophers’ intuitions are no less susceptible to the influence of irrelevant factors (the direct strategy). Additionally, drawing from literature on expertise, they contend that, unlike other domains of expertise, practice does not improve philosophers’ intuitions (the (...) indirect strategy). In this paper, adopting a skill-based perspective on expertise, my primary objective is to defend the expertise defense against both direct and indirect strategies. Based on the skill-based account, I present three arguments against the direct strategy by challenging its power, scope and methodology. Furthermore, borrowing empirical findings from recent literature on expertise, I argue against the indirect strategy that four skills that constitute philosophical expertise regarding thought experiments can be improved through various forms of practice, including deliberate practice. However, my moderate defense departs from typical versions of the expertise defense since I argue that while recent experiments by experimental philosophers cannot undermine the expertise defense, they provide valuable insights into philosophical expertise. (shrink)

Moral conflicts are the situations which emerge as a response to deal with conflicting obligations or duties. An interesting case arises when an agent thinks that two obligations A and B are equally important, but yet fails to choose one obligation over the other. Despite the fact that the systematic study and the resolution of moral conflicts finds prominence in our linguistic discourse, standard deontic logic when used to represent moral conflicts, implies the impossibility of moral conflicts. This presents a (...) conundrum for appropriate logic to address these moral conflicts. We frequently believe that there is a close connection between tolerating inconsistencies and conflicting moral obligations. In paraconsistent logics, we tolerate inconsistencies by treating them to be both true and false. In this paper, we analyze Graham Priest’s paraconsistent logic LP, and extend our examination to the deontic extension of LP known as DLP. We illustrate our work, with a classic example from the famous Indian epic Mahabharata, where the protagonist Arjuna faces a moral conflict in the battlefield of Kurukshetra. The paper aims to avoid deontic explosion and allows to accommodate Arjuna’s moral conflict in paraconsistent deontic logics. Our analysis is expected to provide novel tools towards the logical representation of moral conflicts and to shed some light on the context-sensitive paraconsistent deontic logic. (shrink)

Classical digest, with commentary, of the Mimamsa school in Hindu philosophy.