The book is the first dedicated volume in English on some aspects of Ḥamīd Dīn Kirmānī's and Mullā Ṣadrā's political thought.Kirmānī was a key Isma'ili figure who represented and advocated "moderate" Isma'ili thought during the imamate of the Fatimid imam/caliph in Cairo, al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allah. Mullā Ṣadrā is the most eminent Shi'Imami philosopher in the last four hundred years and the founder of the school of transcendent philosophy who has received huge attention in Muslim and in Western academia.In her extremely (...) useful study, Sayeh Meisami addresses the philosophical link between the theoretical and practical philosophies of the two thinkers, particularly the... (shrink)

There is no doubt that custard apple diseases are among the important reasons that destroy the Custard Apple plant and its agricultural crops. This leads to obvious damage to these plants and they become inedible. Discovering these diseases is a good step to provide the appropriate and correct treatment. Determining the treatment with high accuracy depends on the method used to correctly diagnose the disease, expert systems can greatly help in avoiding damage to these plants. The expert system correctly diagnoses (...) Custard Apple disease to make it easier for farmers to find the right treatment based on the appropriate diagnosis. Objectives: A specialized syllable language system was established for the diagnosis of Custard Apple plant disease. (shrink)

ObjectivesDepression and anxiety persist in cancer patients, creating an additional burden during treatment and making it more challenging in terms of management and control. Studies on the prevalence of depression and anxiety among cancer patients in the Middle East are limited and include many limitations such as their small sample sizes and restriction to a specific type of cancer in specific clinical settings. This study aimed to describe the prevalence and risk factors of depression and anxiety among cancer patients in (...) the inpatient and outpatient settings.Materials and MethodsA total of 1,011 patients formed the study sample. Patients’ psychological status was assessed using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, the Patient Health Questionnaire, and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item scale. The prevalence rate of depressive and anxious symptomatology was estimated by dividing the number of patients who exceeded the borderline score: 10 or more for each subscale of the HADS scale, 15 or more for the GAD-7 scale, and 15 or more in the PHQ-9 by the total number of the patients. Risk factors were identified using logistic regression.ResultsThe prevalence of depressive and anxious symptomatology among all patients was 23.4% and 19.1–19.9%, respectively. Depressive symptomatology was more prevalent across patients who were hospitalized compared with patients in the outpatient setting. Similarly, anxious symptomatology was more prevalent in the inpatient setting. In the inpatient setting, depressive symptomatology was more prevalent among patients with bladder cancer, while severe anxious symptomatology was more prevalent across patients with lung cancer. In the outpatient setting, depressive and anxious symptomatology was more prevalent among breast and prostate cancer patients, respectively. Despite that, around 42.7% and 24.8% of the patients, respectively, reported that they feel anxious and depressed, and only 15.5% of them were using medications to manage their conditions.ConclusionOur study findings demonstrated a higher prevalence of depressive and anxious symptomatology in the inpatient setting and advanced disease stages. In addition, the underutilization of antidepressant therapy was observed. There is a need to consider mental disorders as part of the treatment protocol for cancer patients. Enhanced clinical monitoring and treatment of depression and anxiety of cancer patients are required. (shrink)

Using a sample of 15,174 firms from 24 countries included in the 2009 World Bank Enterprise Survey, we investigate the impact of disclosure standards and auditing infrastructure on the bribery of public officials to secure government contracts. We find that firms are less likely to grant gift to secure a government contract in countries having more extensive financial reporting requirements and countries where audit firms face a higher litigation and sanction risk. Findings also show that firms are less likely to (...) bribe bureaucrats in case financial statements are reviewed by an external audit firm. Our results are economically significant and are robust to several sensitivity analyses. These findings support certain policies that are currently being implemented or discussed to mitigate bribery within the public sector across the globe. (shrink)

Every person has his/her own unique signature that is used mainly for the purposes of personal identification and verification of important documents or legal transactions. There are two kinds of signature verification: static and dynamic. Static(off-line) verification is the process of verifying an electronic or document signature after it has been made, while dynamic(on-line) verification takes place as a person creates his/her signature on a digital tablet or a similar device. Offline signature verification is not efficient and slow for a (...) large number of documents. To overcome the drawbacks of offline signature verification, we have seen a growth in online biometric personal verification such as fingerprints, eye scan etc. In this paper we created CNN model using python for offline signature and after training and validating, the accuracy of testing was 99.70%. (shrink)

Buildings energy consumption is growing gradually and put away around 40% of total energy use. Predicting heating and cooling loads of a building in the initial phase of the design to find out optimal solutions amongst different designs is very important, as ell as in the operating phase after the building has been finished for efficient energy. In this study, an artificial neural network model was designed and developed for predicting heating and cooling loads of a building based on a (...) dataset for building energy performance. The main factors for input variables are: relative compactness, roof area, overall height, surface area, glazing are a, wall area, glazing area distribution of a building, orientation, and the output variables: heating and cooling loads of the building. The dataset used for training are the data published in the literature for various 768 residential buildings. The model was trained and validated, most important factors affecting heating load and cooling load are identified, and the accuracy for the validation was 99.60%. (shrink)

PurposeThe information technology related ethical issues will only increase in frequency and complexity with the increasing diffusion of IT in economies and societies. The purpose of this paper is to explore Egyptian students' attitudes towards the information ethics issues of privacy, access, property, and accuracy, and it evaluates the possible impact of a number of personal characteristics on such attitudes.Design/methodology/approachThis research utilized a cross‐sectional sample and data set to test five hypotheses. It adopted an instrument to collect the respondents' background (...) information and assess their attitudes towards the information ethics issues of privacy, property, accuracy, and access. Egyptian business students at Alexandria University were asked to participate in the survey. A total of 305 responses were collected and analyzed.FindingsThe analysis revealed that students are sensitive to the ethicality of information privacy, information accuracy, and information access. However, students are insensitive to the ethicality of property right. In addition, years of education have a main effect on students' attitudes towards property, and gender and age have an interaction effect on students' attitudes towards access.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings of this research are based on a cross‐sectional data set collected from a sample of business students at a public university. Students, however, may make poor surrogates for business or IT professionals. Future similar research designs that employ large samples from Egyptian working professionals and students in other private and public universities are needed to verify the findings of this research.Practical implicationsThe findings suggest that the investigated university as well as the other similar Egyptian universities should consider integrating ethics education into their curricula. Teaching information ethics, especially from an Islamic perspective, is expected to positively influence students' information ethical attitudes. The enforcement of the existing property right protection laws should also curb software piracy in the Egyptian market.Originality/valueIt is vital to expand the ethical research currently being performed in IT in order to help bridge the gap between behavior and IT. The findings of this research extend the understanding of students' attitudes towards the information ethics issues in Egyptian culture and contribute to the growing body of knowledge on global information ethics. (shrink)

Medical research must involve the participation of human subjects. Knowledge of patients' perspectives and concerns with their involvement in research would enhance recruitment efforts, improve the informed consent process, and enhance the overall trust between patients and investigators. Several studies have examined the views of patients from Western countries. There is limited empirical research involving the perspectives of individuals from developing countries. The purpose of this study is to examine the attitudes of Egyptian individuals toward medical research. Such information would (...) help clarify the type and extent of concerns regarding research participation of individuals from cultural, economic, and political backgrounds that differ from those in developed countries. (shrink)

Hamilton’s theory of inclusive fitness is a widely used framework for studying the evolution of social behavior, but controversy surrounds its status. Hamilton originally derived his famous rb > c rule for the spread of a social gene by assuming additivity of costs and benefits. However, it has recently been argued that the additivity assumption can be dispensed with, so long as the −c and b terms are suitably defined, as partial regression coefficients. I argue that this way of generalizing (...) Hamilton’s rule to the nonadditive case, while formally correct, faces conceptual problems. (shrink)

Does CEO tolerance to risk affect a firm’s long-run sustainability? Using CEO insider debt holding, we show that CEO’s risk-aversion encourages immoral yet rational decisions of emitting more greenhouse gas thereby adversely affecting the firm’s long-run sustainability. Our result is robust to several endogeneity tests including a quasi-natural experiment. Our finding also suggest that to mitigate potential adverse reactions from stakeholders, carbon emitting firms with risk-averse CEOs tend to spend more on CSR activities. Much of the heterogeneity in our results (...) are attributed to companies with weaker governance, powerful CEOs, and operating in a competitive product market. Overall, contrary to conventional wisdom, CEO preference toward risk-aversion can often lead to unethical outcomes (environmental degradation) and especially appears to be a key determinant for firm-level carbon emissions. (shrink)

I attempt a reconstruction of Adam Smith's view of human nature as explicated in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Smith's view of human conduct is neither functionalist nor reductionist, but interactionist. The moral autonomy of the individual, conscience, is neither made a function of public approval nor reduced to self-contained impulses of altruism and egoism. Smith does not see human conduct as a blend of independently defined impulses. Rather, conduct is unified, by the underpinning sentiment of sympathy.

Hamilton’s theory of inclusive fitness is a widely used framework for studying the evolution of social behavior, but controversy surrounds its status. Hamilton originally derived his famous rb > c rule for the spread of a social gene by assuming additivity of costs and benefits. However, it has recently been argued that the additivity assumption can be dispensed with, so long as the −c and b terms are suitably defined, as partial regression coefficients. I argue that this way of generalizing (...) Hamilton’s rule to the nonadditive case, while formally correct, faces conceptual problems. (shrink)

BackgroundStudies have shown that research participants fail to appreciate the difference between research and medical care, labeling such phenomenon as a "therapeutic misconception" (TM). Since research activity involving human participants is increasing in the Middle East, qualitative research investigating aspects of TM is warranted. Our objective was to assess for the existence of therapeutic misconception amongst Egyptians.MethodsStudy Tool: We developed a semi-structured interview guide to elicit the knowledge, attitudes, and perspectives of Egyptians regarding medical research.Setting: We recruited individuals from the (...) outpatient settings (public and private) at Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt.Analysis: Interviews were taped, transcribed, and translated. We analyzed the content of the transcribed text to identify the presence of a TM, defined in one of two ways: TM1 = inaccurate beliefs about how individualized care can be compromised by the procedures in the research and TM2 = inaccurate appraisal of benefit obtained from the research study.ResultsOur findings showed that a majority of participants (11/15) expressed inaccurate beliefs regarding the degree with which individualized care will be maintained in the research setting (TM1) and a smaller number of participants (5/15) manifested an unreasonable belief in the likelihood of benefits to be obtained from a research study (TM2). A total of 12 of the 15 participants were judged to have expressed a TM on either one of these bases.ConclusionThe presence of TM is not uncommon amongst Egyptian individuals. We recommend further qualitative studies investigating aspects of TM involving a larger sample size distinguished by different types of illnesses and socio-economic variables, as well as those who have and have not participated in clinical research. (shrink)

BackgroundA different ethos with respect to the perception of medical ethics prevails in societies in transition such as those in the Arabian Peninsula, which makes it difficult to apply international principles of bioethics in medical practice. This study aimed to develop and psychometrically test an instrument that measures physicians’ awareness of bioethics and medical law and their attitudes towards the practice of medical ethics. Additionally, it examined physician correlates influencing the awareness of bioethics.MethodsFollowing a rigorous review of relevant literature by (...) a panel of experts, a 13-item instrument, the Omani physicians’ bioethics and medical law awareness (OBMLA) questionnaire was developed with the aim of assessing physicians’ awareness of bioethics and medical law. The study tool’s construct validity and internal consistency reliability were examined by exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and Cronbach’s alpha. In a cross-sectional study, the questionnaire was distributed among a random sample of 200 physicians at a tertiary hospital in Muscat, Oman. Participant characteristics that may influence awareness of bioethics and medical law were explored.ResultsThe EFA of the OBMLA questionnaire resulted in three well-loading factors: (1) Physicians’ bioethics practice subscale (2) incentive related bioethics subscale and (3) medical law awareness subscale. Internal consistency reliability ranged between Cronbach’s α: 0.73–0.8. Of the total 200 participants, 52% reported that teaching medical ethics during medical school was inadequate. The overall mean (standard deviation, SD) of the bioethics awareness score and Omani medical law awareness were 27.6 (3.5) and 10.1 (2.1) respectively. The majority of physicians (73%) reported that they frequently encountered ethical dilemmas in their practice and 24.5% endorsed the view that unethical decisions tended to occur in their practice.ConclusionThe study provides an insight into the practice of bioethics, and the awareness of bioethics and medical law among physicians in a teaching hospital in Oman. The OBMLA questionnaire appears to be a valid and reliable tool to assess a physician’s awareness of bioethics and medical law. In this preliminary study, it appears that participants have suboptimal scores on the indices which measure practice and awareness of bioethics and medical law. (shrink)

In a recent article I compared the problem of theory choice, in which scientists must choose between competing theories, with the problem of social choice, in which society must choose between competing social alternatives. I argued that the formal machinery of social choice theory can be used to shed light on the problem of theory choice in science, an argument that has been criticized by Michael Morreau and Jacob Stegenga. This article replies to Morreau’s and Stegenga’s criticisms.

Such obvious truth must be made even more obvious, and this is exactly what Samir Selmanovic is doing for all of us and for the future of humanity.

This paper provides a philosophical analysis of the ongoing controversy surrounding R.A. Fisher's famous ‘fundamental theorem’ of natural selection. The difference between the ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ interpretations of the theorem is explained. I argue that proponents of the modern interpretation have captured Fisher's intended meaning correctly and shown that the theorem is mathematically correct, pace the traditional consensus. However, whether the theorem has any real biological significance remains an unresolved issue. I argue that the answer depends on whether we accept (...) Fisher's non-standard notion of environmental change, on which the theorem rests; arguments for and against this notion are explored. I suggest that there is a close link between Fisher's fundamental theorem and the modern ‘gene's eye’ view of evolution. Introduction What Does the Fundamental Theorem Say? Key Concepts Explained Alleged Significance of the FTNS Traditional versus Modern Interpretations of the FTNS The Modern Interpretation Illustrated Fisher's Concept of ‘Environmental Change’ Causality and the Modern Interpretation The Significance of the FTNS Re-considered Appendix CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Radiography images are widely utilized in the health sector to recognize the patient health condition. The noise and irrelevant region information minimize the entire disease detection accuracy and computation complexity. Therefore, in this study, statistical Kolmogorov–Smirnov test has been integrated with wavelet transform to overcome the de-noising issues. Then the cat swarm-optimized deep belief network is applied to extract the features from the affected region. The optimized deep learning model reduces the feature training cost and time and improves the overall (...) disease detection accuracy. The network learning process is enhanced according to the AdaDelta learning process, which replaces the learning parameter with a delta value. This process minimizes the error rate while recognizing the disease. The efficiency of the system evaluated using image retrieval in medical application dataset. This process helps to determine the various diseases such as breast, lung, and pediatric studies. (shrink)

Derrida and the Inheritance of Democracy provides a theoretically rich and accessible account of Derrida's political philosophy. Demonstrating the key role inheritance plays in Derrida’s thinking, Samir Haddad develops a general theory of inheritance and shows how it is essential to democratic action. He transforms Derrida’s well-known idea of "democracy to come" into active engagement with democratic traditions. Haddad focuses on issues such as hospitality, justice, normativity, violence, friendship, birth, and the nature of democracy as he reads these deeply (...) political writings. (shrink)

This is a conversation that took place at Dr. Vladimir Safatle’s São Paulo home on 16 February, 2019, during Dr. Samir Gandesha’s time as a Visiting Professor at the Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas -FFLCH-USP. It addresses the South American roots of the authoritarian Neoliberalism that has now become a truly global phenomenon.

This article argues that the figure of Oedipus lies at the heart of Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment. Oedipus is the prototypical Aufklärer as no one can rival him in his courageous attempt to employ his own autonomous reason `without direction from another'; yet self-knowledge remains beyond his grasp. Indeed, Oedipus' obsessive drive to bring the truth to light ultimately leads him to put out his own eyes because he is unable to bear the sight of the catastrophe that (...) this drive engenders. Oedipus' demise represents in allegorical form the self-destruction of enlightenment itself. Enlightenment is similarly driven to illuminate the world in its totality by reducing it to philosophical concepts. In the process, however, it becomes blind to the question of its dependence upon that which it purports to possess. In its attempt at total illumination, therefore, enlightenment does not effectuate an exit or Ausgang from the opacity of myth, as Kant had held, but rather is blinded, paradoxically, by the radiance of its own projections. Reading the dialectic of enlightenment through the tragedy of Oedipus leads back to the enigmatic question of art as the means by which the rationalization and disenchantment of the world can be reflected upon critically. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that Hume's description of human inductive reasoning is inadequate. But many philosophers think that this inadequacy in no way affects the force of Hume's argument for the unjustifiability of inductive reasoning. I argue that this constellation of opinions contains a serious tension, given that Hume was not merely pointing out that induction is fallible. I then explore a recent diagnosis of where Hume's sceptical argument goes wrong, due to Elliott Sober. Sober argues that Hume committed a (...) quantifier-shift fallacy, i.e. inferred a statement of ?? form from one of ?? form. The implications of this diagnosis for the traditional problem of induction are briefly examined. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

Rachlin basically marshals three reasons behind his unconventional claim that altruism is a subcategory of self-control and that, hence, the prisoner's dilemma is the appropriate metaphor of altruism. I do not find any of the three reasons convincing. Therefore, the prisoner's dilemma metaphor is unsuitable for explaining altruism.

We consider the question: under what circumstances can the concept of adaptation be applied to groups, rather than individuals? Gardner and Grafen (2009, J. Evol. Biol.22: 659–671) develop a novel approach to this question, building on Grafen's ‘formal Darwinism’ project, which defines adaptation in terms of links between evolutionary dynamics and optimization. They conclude that only clonal groups, and to a lesser extent groups in which reproductive competition is repressed, can be considered as adaptive units. We re-examine the conditions under (...) which the selection–optimization links hold at the group level. We focus on an important distinction between two ways of understanding the links, which have different implications regarding group adaptationism. We show how the formal Darwinism approach can be reconciled with G.C. Williams’ famous analysis of group adaptation, and we consider the relationships between group adaptation, the Price equation approach to multi-level selection, and the alternative approach based on contextual analysis. (shrink)

Does natural selection act primarily on individual organisms, on groups, on genes, or on whole species? The question of levels of selection - on which biologists and philosophers have long disagreed - is central to evolutionary theory and to the philosophy of biology. Samir Okasha's comprehensive analysis gives a clear account of the philosophical issues at stake in the current debate.

In the conditions in which dominant global powers is still trying to expand their cultural hegemony, neo-colonialism, over the countries which are trying to hold their independence, through the creation of native intellectuals who are mentally Gharbzadeh, Westoxificated. This study finds it crucial to take the issue a step further ahead to discuss how the ideas of Ale-e Ahamad’s famous theory of Gharbzadegi is still applicable in our time and reveals its representations in Said’s well-known concept of Orientalism. These imperial (...) powers through the controlling of the world’s educational system and thoughts and ultimately the mindsets of the native intellectuals of the downtrodden countries would have produced Intellectuals who are mentally filled with Westernized knowledge. These people who are mostly kind, good in nature, and placid seem to be dominated by a sense of instrumental rationality which makes them obediently adaptable to the dominant power. These people have narrated our history so far and we have had enough. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In this paper I argue that Derrida's writings on education contain a profound rethinking of professorial authority. I first outline the sources of professorial authority and describe how they were traditionally conceived in France at the time when Derrida was working. I then show how Derrida challenges and transforms these sources, focusing in particular on a new relation to knowledge, a new relation to the state, and a new understanding of charisma that emerge from his work.

Cancers rely on multiple, heterogeneous processes at different scales, pertaining to many biomedical fields. Therefore, understanding cancer is necessarily an interdisciplinary task that requires placing specialised experimental and clinical research into a broader conceptual, theoretical, and methodological framework. Without such a framework, oncology will collect piecemeal results, with scant dialogue between the different scientific communities studying cancer. We argue that one important way forward in service of a more successful dialogue is through greater integration of applied sciences (experimental and clinical) (...) with conceptual and theoretical approaches, informed by philosophical methods. By way of illustration, we explore six central themes: (i) the role of mutations in cancer; (ii) the clonal evolution of cancer cells; (iii) the relationship between cancer and multicellularity; (iv) the tumour microenvironment; (v) the immune system; and (vi) stem cells. In each case, we examine open questions in the scientific literature through a philosophical methodology and show the benefit of such a synergy for the scientific and medical understanding of cancer. (shrink)

Many philosophers agree that Hume was not simply objecting to inductive inferences on the grounds of their logical invalidity and that his description of our inductive behaviour was inadequate, but none the less regard his argument against induction as irrefutable. I argue that this constellation of opinions contains a serious tension. In the light of the tension, I re-examine Hume’s actual sceptical argument and show that the argument as it stands is valid but unsound. I argue that it can only (...) be converted into a sound one if our inductive behaviour can be characterized as a process of rule-governed ampliation. Drawing on some Bayesian ideas, I argue that our inductive behaviour probably cannot be characterized in that way, so our immunity from Hume is secure. Finally, I compare my response to Hume’s argument with some other well known responses. (shrink)

The idea that natural selection can operate on cultural as well as genetic variation is central to recent theories of cultural evolution. This raises an overarching question: how much of traditional evolutionary theory, which was formulated in population-genetic terms, can survive intact once the possibility of cultural inheritance is taken into account? This question is addressed in relation to R. A. Fisher’s “fundamental theorem” of natural selection. Though Fisher’s theorem may appear to be an essentially genetic result, a version of (...) the theorem can be derived that applies to any evolving population, with an arbitrary inheritance mechanism. However, I argue that the biological significance of this “generalized” version of the fundamental theorem is less than that of the Fisherian original. (shrink)

We propose a new relevance sensitive model for representing and revising belief structures, which relies on a notion of partial language splitting and tolerates some amount of inconsistency while retaining classical logic. The model preserves an agent's ability to answer queries in a coherent way using Belnap's four-valued logic. Axioms analogous to the AGM axioms hold for this new model. The distinction between implicit and explicit beliefs is represented and psychologically plausible, computationally tractable procedures for query answering and belief..

We critically examine a number of aspects of Grafen’s ‘formal Darwinism’ project. We argue that Grafen’s ‘selection-optimality’ links do not quite succeed in vindicating the working assumption made by behavioural ecologists and others—that selection will lead organisms to exhibit adaptive behaviour—since these links hold true even in the presence of strong genetic and developmental constraints. However we suggest that the selection-optimality links can profitably be viewed as constituting an axiomatic theory of fitness. Finally, we compare Grafen’s project with Fisher’s ‘fundamental (...) theorem of natural selection’, and we speculate about whether Grafen’s results can be extended to a game-theoretic setting. (shrink)

In this paper I analyze Leonard Lawlor’s strategy of inheriting from the tradition, highlighting the way he traces and amplifies a series of conceptual transformations that take place across twentieth-century continental philosophy. Focusing on the particular movement from metaphysics to ethics enacted in From Violence to Speaking Out, I raise three concerns regarding Lawlor’s ethics of “the least violence,” arguing that there is a problem with a quantitative understanding of this notion, that the quality of potentiality attributed to it needs (...) more clarification, and that Lawlor’s proposal of a radical letting be has more dangers than he seems to realize. (shrink)

John Harsanyi and John Rawls both used the veil of ignorance thought experiment to study the problem of choosing between alternative social arrangements. With his ‘impartial observer theorem’, Harsanyi tried to show that the veil of ignorance argument leads inevitably to utilitarianism, an argument criticized by Sen, Weymark and others. A quite different use of the veil-of-ignorance concept is found in evolutionary biology. In the cell-division process called meiosis, in which sexually reproducing organisms produce gametes, the chromosome number is halved; (...) when meiosis is fair, each gene has only a fifty percent chance of making it into any gamete. This creates a Mendelian veil of ignorance, which has the effect of aligning the interests of all the genes in an organism. This paper shows how Harsanyi's version of the veil-of-ignorance argument can shed light on Mendelian genetics. There turns out to be an intriguing biological analogue of the impartial observer theorem that is immune from the Sen/Weymark objections to Harsanyi's original. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.SOCIAL JUSTICE, GENOMIC JUSTICE AND THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE: HARSANYI MEETS MENDELVolume 28, Issue 1Samir Okasha DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266267112000119Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. SOCIAL JUSTICE, GENOMIC JUSTICE AND THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE: HARSANYI MEETS MENDELVolume 28, Issue 1Samir Okasha DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266267112000119Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. SOCIAL JUSTICE, GENOMIC JUSTICE AND THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE: HARSANYI MEETS MENDELVolume 28, Issue 1Samir Okasha DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266267112000119Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

Editor's suggested further reading in BioEssays ftz Evolution: Findings, hypotheses and speculations (response to DOI 10.1002/bies.201100019) AbstractOn the border of the homeotic function: Re‐evaluating the controversial role of cofactor‐recruiting motifs AbstractControl of DNA replication: A new facet of Hox proteins? AbstractClassification of sequence signatures: a guide to Hox protein function Abstract.

When the Taliban destroyed the famous statues of the Buddha in the Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan more than a decade ago, the outrage of the global community, including that of prominent Muslim religious leaders, was matched perhaps only by the pious euphoria of Afghanistan’s hardliners. They had finally succeeded in removing visible signs of idolatry from their landscape, and fulfilled, at least in their own eyes, a long overdue religious mission. In the words of the Taliban leader Mullah Omar, “Muslims (...) should be proud to destroy idols. Our destroying them was an act of praise for God.”1Yet such extreme acts of puritanical iconoclasm at the hands of Muslim fundamentalists, at least within modern history, have more.. (shrink)

Social robots are expected to take over a significant number of jobs in the coming decades. The present research provides the first systematic evaluation of occupation suitability of existing social robots based on user perception derived classification of them. The study was conducted in the Middle East since the views of this region are rarely considered in human–robot interaction research, although the region is poised to increasingly adopt the use of robots. Laboratory-based experimental data revealed that a robot’s appearance plays (...) an important role in the perception of its capabilities and preference for it to perform a particular job. Participants showed a preference for machine-like robots to perform dull and dirty occupations and humanoids, but not androids, to perform jobs requiring extensive social interaction with humans. However, other aspects of appearance than morphology determine whether a robot is preferred for a job irrespective of its perceived capability to do it. (shrink)

Textual exegesis is used to show that Marx's concept of social labor is transhistorical, referring to a collective activity of humans as a species. The collective nature of labor is suspended in capitalist production because of the anarchic character of market relations. But the suspension is skin deep: The sociality of labor asserts itself in a mediated manner through the alienated empowerment of goods with value. This is commodity fetishism, which vanishes when relations of production become actually collective?matching the transhistorical (...) essence of labor. Marx's concept of social labor is adjudged inadequate. It amounts to asserting that the actions of agents could be ex ante calculated according to a global rationality. In this respect, Marx's concept of social labor is reminiscent of the equally deficient notion of perfect competition in mainstream neoclassical economics. (shrink)

In this paper, we draw inferences from the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s book, The Idea of Justice to inform the organisational justice literature. The extant societal-level theories of justice tend to emphasise aspects that are analogous to either the procedural or distributive dimensions of organisational justice. The Senian idea of comprehensive justice is different in that it synthesises the procedural- and distributive-related dimensions at the societal-level. We theorise that the Senian notion could be applied at the organisational-level to facilitate outcomes (...) that are actually valued by the workforce. Further, we contend that the emphasis on non-parochialism in the Senian notion of justice makes it particularly relevant to the ethics of multi-national corporations operating in alien cultures. To support our contention, we analyse the lean manufacturing practices of a Japanese MNC operating in India. Our case analysis demonstrates how Senian thinking helps one surface unjust outcomes that would otherwise go unacknowledged. Our analysis also offers tentative support to Senian claims about the capacity of human behaviour to undermine well-designed institutions. Concurring with the Senian view, which favours combating manifest injustice rather than fixating over designing perfectly just institutions, we derive some normative implications to advance the cause of striving for outcomes that are actually valued by the workforce. (shrink)

The article examines the nature of tawba, usually translated as ‘repentance’, in the thought of Abū Țālib al-Makkī . Makkī’s most comprehensive discussion of this topic appears in the thirty-second chapter of his Qūt al-qulūb , one of the most widely reads works of the early Sufi tradition. It is the longest single sustained treatment of tawba, written from the perspective of Sufi spiritual psychology, currently available to us from the first four centuries of Islam. By drawing on Revelation as (...) well as the earlier Sufi tradition he is heir to, Makkī delineates certain conditions which have to be met in order for tawba to be sound. The article explores Makkī’s treatment of these conditions as well as their relation to notions of tawba in the broader Islamic tradition. (shrink)

Organisms change their shape and behavior during ontogenesis in response to incentives—what biologists call “phenotypic plasticity” or what is called here more specifically “behavioral plasticity.” Such plasticity is usually in the direction of enhancing welfare or fitness. In light of basic concepts in economics, such behavioral plasticity is nothing but rationality. Such rationality is not limited to organisms with neural systems. It also characterizes brainless organisms such as plants, fungi, and unicellular organisms. The gist of the article is the distinction (...) between rationality and intelligence. Whereas rationality is ubiquitous in all organisms, intelligence varies in degrees depending on division of labor that may involve the evolution of a neural system. This article aims to defend the universality of rationality—the Organismus oeconomicus hypothesis. It argues that neither the notion of bounded rationality of behavioral economics nor Herbert Simon’s “procedural rationality” can ultimately undermine the Organismus oeconomicus hypothesis. (shrink)