This study examines the existence, intensity and impacts of intolerance for Press criticism in Pakistani society. It’s generally believed that intolerance for Press criticism leads to professional and psychological complexes for the Press to play its role as a voice for unvoiced and to hold those in power accountable because the Press’s role as the Watchdog compulsively needs high capacities of tolerance in the society to understand the realities and habituate rationalism. As working journalists have to face the direct reaction (...) from masses regarding Press criticism so this paper explores journalist’s perceptions about the presence of intolerance in the societal frame of Pakistan regarding Press’s criticism using survey technique under Likert Scale. The study also incorporates the impacts of intolerance on professionalism in media that induce threats to journalists and compel them to exercise self-censorship which ultimately results in content biases, depriving the citizens of fundamental right of expression. The conclusion provides guidelines for policy making on the subject of Press freedom and social coherence. Also, this study enhances understandings regarding the social sphere of the country and gauges the level of intolerance for media discourses. (shrink)

How do we come to like the things that we do? Each one of us starts from a relatively similar state at birth, yet we end up with vastly different sets of aesthetic preferences. These preferences go on to define us both as individuals and as members of our cultures. Therefore, it is important to understand how aesthetic preferences form over our lifetimes. This poses a challenging problem: to understand this process, one must account for the many factors at play (...) in the formation of aesthetic values and how these factors influence each other over time. A general framework based on basic neuroscientific principles that can also account for this process is needed. Here, we present such a framework and illustrate it through a model that accounts for the trajectories of aesthetic values over time. Our framework is inspired by meta-analytic data of neuroimaging studies of aesthetic appraisal. This framework incorporates effects of sensory inputs, rewards, and motivational states. Crucially, each one of these effects is probabilistic. We model their interactions under a reinforcement-learning circuitry. Simulations of this model and mathematical analysis of the framework lead to three main findings. First, different people may develop distinct weighing of aesthetic variables because of individual variability in motivation. Second, individuals from different cultures and environments may develop different aesthetic values because of unique sensory inputs and social rewards. Third, because learning is stochastic stemming from probabilistic sensory inputs, motivations, and rewards, aesthetic values vary in time. These three theoretical findings account for different lines of empirical research. Through our study, we hope to provide a general and unifying framework for understanding the various aspects involved in the formation of aesthetic values over time. (shrink)

The Perfect Guide to the Sciences of the Qurʾān, by Imām Jalāl-al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Suyūṭī, vol. 1. Translated by Ḥamid Algar, Michael Schub, and Ayman Abdel Ḥaleem; reviewed by Osman S. A. Ismaʿīl A. al-Bīlī. The Great Books of Islamic Civilization. Reading, UK: Garnett Publishing, 2011. Pp. xxxiii + 301. £60.