Government is a rational necessity for mankind because a society without government leads to chaos. Government regulates the affairs of the individual and the community, implements the limits, and ensures the dignity and independence of the human society. Thinking in the main goals of the divine prophets, it is clear that achieving great goals such as liberating people from the domination and captivity of foreigners, comprehensive human education, reviving human values, establishing justice, bringing people to excellence and growth, etc., requires (...) formation. In this context, transparency is a key attribute, which can bring much power to the expected level as an effective mechanism for protecting citizens’ political, economic, social and cultural rights. This concept is thus a valuable solution in the fight against sinister phenomena, such as political and economic corruptions, which are ranked as the biggest challenges facing any society. Even though transparency is nowadays deemed an emerging concept, its roots can be traced back to Islamic teachings, mainly during the short reign of Imam Ali, (peace be upon him [PBUH]). As a central figure, Imam Ali considered transparency as essential, and shared his views on governance and practical methods with the people and all audiences based on complete honesty and openness. As per Alavi thoughts, some criteria and indicators, both structural and behavioural, are involved in order to ensure the public good and meet the interests of all by providing the prerequisites for the realisation of transparency, at odds with the predominant ideas that transparency in governance, like many concepts in the political and governance-related spheres, has a western origin. Contribution: The concept of transparency, with a proven history in global experiences, accordingly holds a special place in the literature of Islamic governments. Given the importance of this topic, the present study with an emphasis on transparency aims to examine Islamic teachings on governance in Islamic societies, and reflect on governance transparency components in such societies, relying on expert opinions. (shrink)

As per the teachings of Islam, social trust involves placing others as the pillars of the Islamic countries, which needs to be maintained. Therefore, any promise or action that undermines the social trust of the people as a social capital is one of the most important anti-social factors that must be dealt with. In view of that, Islam is struggling against hypocrisy as an antisocial trend, because it damages social trust when a hypocrite preaches one thing and does another; in (...) other words, the deeds do not confirm the words. That is why citizens cannot believe and trust in their promises, because such individuals do not fulfil them at any time. In this context, officials are suggested to respect the principle of transparency in the governance of Islamic societies in order to improve citizens’ social trust. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the role of transparent governance based on the teachings of Nahj al-Balagha in creating social trust among 428 Iranian Muslim citizens in 2022. In sum, the results indicated that transparent governance has a significant positive effect on citizens’ social trust in the officials of Islamic societies, as calculated by structural equation modelling in Linear Structural Relations (LISREL) (path coefficient = 0.58; t -value = 5.54). Contribution: This study provided a new insight into the role of transparent governance in creating and strengthening social trust among the officials and citizens of Islamic societies, which deserves further attention by governments and researchers. (shrink)

Neuroarchitecture uses neuroscientific tools to better understand architectural design and its impact on human perception and subjective experience. The form or shape of the built environment is fundamental to architectural design, but not many studies have shown the impact of different forms on the inhabitants’ emotions. This study investigated the neurophysiological correlates of different interior forms on the perceivers’ affective state and the accompanying brain activity. To understand the impact of naturalistic three-dimensional (3D) architectural forms, it is essential to perceive (...) forms from different perspectives. We computed clusters of form features extracted from pictures of residential interiors and constructed exemplary 3D room models based on and representing different formal clusters. To investigate human brain activity during three-dimensional perception of architectural spaces, we used a mobile brain/body imaging (MoBI) approach recording the electroencephalogram (EEG) of participants while they naturally walk through different interior forms in virtual reality (VR). The results revealed a strong impact of curvature geometries on activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Theta band activity in ACC correlated with specific feature types (rs (14) = 0.525, p = 0.037) and geometry (rs (14) = - 0.579, p = 0.019), providing evidence for a role of this structure in processing architectural features beyond their emotional impact. The posterior cingulate cortex and the occipital lobe were involved in the perception of different room perspectives during the stroll through the rooms. This study sheds new light on the use of mobile EEG and VR in architectural studies and provides the opportunity to study human brain dynamics in participants that actively explore and realistically experience architectural spaces. (shrink)

Background:Privacy is a complicated and obscure concept, which has special meanings in the healthcare environment; therefore, it is essential for healthcare providers to fully understand this conce...

In May 2023, the world’s first whole-eye and partial-face transplant was performed, representing the first known whole-eye transplant in history and the “only successful combined transplant case of...

By introducing and extending description logic (DLs) and growing up their application in knowledge representation and especially in OWLs and semantic web scope, many shortcomings and bugs were identified that weren’t resolvable in classical DLs and so logicians and computer scientists intended to non-classical and non-monotonic reasoning tools. In this paper, I discuses about abduction problem solvers, and by introducing A-Box abduction in description logics (DLs), such as ALC, discuss about decidability and complexity in different introduced algorithms, and report shortly (...) our team’s advantages in developing and implementation of ΑBox abduction in DLs. (shrink)

We argue that the debate about the normativity of belief thesis has been hampered by the slogan, ‘belief aims at truth’. We show that the slogan provides no content to the normativity of belief. The slogan encourages formulations of the norm as a prescriptive norm. There are well-known problems with such formulations. We provide a new formulation of the thesis as a prohibitive norm. This captures the key intuition most normativists about belief want to endorse.

A generic analysis of research article abstracts can cover issues of different types; among them are linguistic features. An integral part of linguistic features of research article abstracts is interactive metadiscourse usage that can assist to make the text persuasive and unfolding to a discourse community. The main principle behind applying interactive metadiscourse is the view of writing as socially engaging; specifically, it indicates the ways writers project themselves into their arguments to declare their attitudes and commitments to the readers. (...) This study aimed to explore how interactive metadiscourse markers are deployed by research article abstract writers belonging to different disciplinary communities within the soft sciences, while trying to reach the audience by creating a well-organized discourse. Hyland’s interpersonal model of metadiscourse was adopted to analyze 60 research article abstracts written in Applied Linguistics and Economics. Based on the results, there were marked variations found across the two disciplines in terms of interactive metadiscourse markers. (shrink)

The issue of existence - quiddity difference is one of the important issues that were put forward for the first time in Islamic philosophy without having any background in Greek philosophy. Aristotle's metaphysics which is the main source of the first philosophy contains only synonymous and verbal meaning ofexistence. The issue of existence - quiddity difference has no room in Aristotle's works. This issue was proposed first by Farabi and then was completed by Ibn sina. In Islamic philosophy when it (...) is proved that existence in the mind is neither identical with quiddity nor a part of it but differs with it and is excess of it, that is, when it is proved that existence occurs on quiddity, this question arises that how is their relation in the outside? Whether existence occurs on quiddity or existence and quiddity are identical in the external world? To this question the Islamic philosophers answer that existence and quiddity are identical in the outside and it isimpossible that they differ from each other in the external world. The importance of this issue is that it finally led to the origination of the doctrine of the principality of existence which is known as the culmination of Islamic philosophy. The main goal of this article is study this issue and its impact upon the origination of the doctrine of the principiality of existence. (shrink)

We present a survey of the recent applications of continuous domains for providing simple computational models for classical spaces in mathematics including the real line, countably based locally compact spaces, complete separable metric spaces, separable Banach spaces and spaces of probability distributions. It is shown how these models have a logical and effective presentation and how they are used to give a computational framework in several areas in mathematics and physics. These include fractal geometry, where new results on existence and (...) uniqueness of attractors and invariant distributions have been obtained, measure and integration theory, where a generalization of the Riemann theory of integration has been developed, and real arithmetic, where a feasible setting for exact computer arithmetic has been formulated. We give a number of algorithms for computation in the theory of iterated function systems with applications in statistical physics and in period doubling route to chaos; we also show how efficient algorithms have been obtained for computing elementary functions in exact real arithmetic. (shrink)

A. EInleitung B. CArl Schmitt und die Hinterfragung der Politikwissenschaft Die Frage nach der modernen Politikwissenschaft - Der Begriff des Politischen - Pluralismus- und Liberalismuskritik C. POlitische Theologie und der Prozess der Sakularisierung Politische Theologie - Monotheismus und Reichstheologie - Sakularisierungsprozess der Neuzeit D. DIe aus dem politischen Willen hervorgehende Jurisprudenz Der moderne Staat - Legalitat und Legitimitat - Verfassungslehre - Menschheitsdemokratie vs. MAssendemokratie E. DAs Gleichgewicht der Machte als Aufhalter der Globalitat Nomos vs. UNiversalismus - GroSSraum als Alternative der (...) globalen Welt - Feindlichkeit und Menschenrechte - Das Problem des Burgerkriegs F. GLobalisierungskritik in den Kategorien von Carl Schmitts Gedankengut Die Entmachtigung des Nationalstaats - Die Verrechtlichung der zwischenstaatlichen BeziehungenFazit Literaturverzeichnis, Personen- und Sachregister. (shrink)

Last year marked a decade since the publication of the book “Islamic Biomedical Ethics” by religious studies professor Abdulaziz Sachedina in which he called for a critical and rigorous analytical approach to the ethical inquiry of biomedical issues from an Islamic perspective. Since the publication of this landmark work, some authors have continued to call into question the ways in which Islam as a religious tradition is engaged with in the secular bioethics literature. This paper describes common argumentative issues with (...) current Islamic bioethics scholarship and offers general pearls and strategies to facilitate better engagement with religious approaches to bioethical issues. (shrink)

In social systems or spaces, distance between the centre and the periphery breeds epistemic injustice. There are growing accounts of epistemic injustice in health-related fields, as in the article by Pratt and de Vries.1 The title of the article asks: ‘Where is knowledge from the global South?’ Like me, you may answer by saying: ‘Knowledge from the global South is in the global South’. That answer says a lot about how we right epistemic injustice done to actors in the global (...) South or the periphery, including in health ethics. Pratt and de Vries identified four sets of actors (individuals, institutions, journals and funders) responsible for righting epistemic injustice. For three of the four sets of actors, they recognised the need for—or the possibility of—symmetry between global North and global South. Except journals. They did not seriously consider that journals are either present in or could belong to the global South; to the periphery. Platforms for knowledge exchange, circulation, cultivation and curation—such as journals, conferences, publishers, blogs, archives, seminars, books and the media, social or traditional—are neither physically nor epistemically neutral. They are situated. The BBC cannot do for Nigeria or Australia what it does for Britain; neither can the BMJ. Many of us take our position at the centre or periphery as neutral, natural, necessary or permanent. But the African American writer Toni Morrison proved the opposite with her career: ‘I stood at the border, stood at the edge and claimed it as central. l claimed it as central, and let the rest of the world move over to where I was.’2 Although physically in the USA, Toni Morrison was writing …. (shrink)

In international politics, bridging the gap between the real and knowledge poses a persistent challenge as translating the real into concepts and narratives can nurture the epistemic fallacy. Critical realism addresses this by separating ontology from epistemology at the meta-theoretical level, yet in practical research, critical realism tends to impose assumptions about the ontological complexity of the real at the transcendental level. This paper examines the practical difficulty of overcoming the epistemic fallacy in International Relations inquiries, asserting that critical realism (...) does not effectively guide practical inquiries in separating ontology from epistemology at a methodological level. Despite the meta-theoretical separation, research inquiries can remain theory-laden and epistemically dependent. The solution lies in problematizing ontological presentation, and sustaining critique at the discursive level on International Relations theories, methodologies, and implications. This approach maintains a critical focus on ontological aspects at the practical level to deal with the challenge of the epistemic fallacy. (shrink)

1. Ḥāshīyat al-Ṣabbān ʻalá al-Sharḥ al-Ṣaghīr lil-Mullawī ʻalá al-Sullam al-murawnaq -- 2. Taqrīrāt Ḥasan ibn Riḍwān al-Ḥusaynī.

There has been growing consensus to develop relevant guidance to improve the ethical review of global health policy and systems research and address the current absence of formal ethics guidance.

According to many philosophers, the notion of belief is constitutively normative ; Shah ; Shah and Velleman (); Gibbard (); Wedgwood ). In a series of widely discussed papers, Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons have developed an ingenious ‘Moral Twin Earth’ argument against ‘Cornell Realist’ metaethical views which hold that moral terms have synthetic natural definitions in the manner of natural kind terms. In this paper we shall suggest that an adaptation of the Moral Twin Earth argument to the doxastic (...) case – Doxastic Twin Earth – provides new evidence for the normativity of belief. (shrink)

The declining influence of religious approaches to bioethical issues in academic medical discourse has been increasingly evident over recent decades. Most bioethical scholarship today is dominated...

Moral distress is a fundamental problem in the nursing profession that affects nurses. Critical care nurses are more susceptible to this problem due to the nature of their work. Moral distress may, in turn, lead to several undesirable consequences. This study aimed to determine the relationship between moral distress and intention to leave the ward among critical care nurses. This descriptive-correlational study was conducted by census method on all eligible nurses who worked in Coronary Care Unit and Intensive Care Unit (...) of AhVaz hospitals, Iran. Data was collected by Corley’s moral distress questionnaire and a researcher-made questionnaire to investigate the intention to leave the ward. Questionnaires were completed through self-report and data were analyzed using a t-test and Pearson correlation coefficient. The results showed that there was a direct association between moral distress and intension to leave the ward in critical care nurses. Also, the intensity of moral distress and the intention to leave the ward were significantly higher in ICU nurses. Given the high exposure of critical care nurses with moral distress and its association with leaving the ward, it seems that devising strategies to reduce or control moral distress and its negative consequences are necessary, particularly in ICU nurses. (shrink)

Thus far, recent protests in the Arab world have led to different political outcomes including regime change, civil war, and suppression by regime. The present paper explores the reasons behind these different outcomes. The research methodology is a comparative case study approach, and five countries of Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, and Syria are examined. The hypothesis is that the different political outcomes of the protests are due to a combination of factors, including the level of mobilization of anti-regime movements, the (...) responses of national militaries, and finally the reaction of international powers. Different configurations of these components in the crisis-stricken countries have led to different political outcomes. (shrink)

In aesthetics/philosophy of art, Fichte did not produce works as great as Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment or Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics. As a result, it was long believed that he had no role to play in the aesthetics of German idealism. Nevertheless, there are a few works in which we can identify the materials for developing an innovative philosophy of art. In this article, it is argued that Fichte takes two fundamental steps in aesthetics: 1) by transferring (...) the weight of the discussion of aesthetics to the philosophy of artistic creation, he makes, as it were, a Copernican revolution in aesthetics and thus transforms the aesthetics of taste into a philosophy of art based on the creative spirit; 2) he raises the status of aesthetics (in fact, the aesthetic sense) to the level of “a (or the) condition for the possibility of philosophy.”. (shrink)

This paper takes the form of a ‘performative’ dialogue, a recounting of scenes, which alternate, in the mode of a cinematic montage, with academic analysis of the interfaces between boxing, art, and space. In his book Body and Soul: Notebooks on an Apprentice Boxer, sociologist Loïc Wacquant mixes three genres: analytic sociology, depictive ethnography, and short story. He argues that he used this unorthodox methodology ‘to make the reader simultaneously feel and understand how boxers are “gripped” by their craft and (...) viscerally tied to it’. Similarly, in this paper, the overlapping voices of its two authors engage in both performative, creative and intellectual ways with the critiques and social rituals surrounding boxing, ultimately finding that an understanding of boxing as an epistemological encounter gives rise to interesting ways to think through the relationships between art and urban space itself. The paper ranges widely over each author’s personal experience of boxing, analyses of specific artworks both ancient and modern, and an analysis of the psychogeography of urban space, and in particular, Johannesburg. The form of the paper, as it incorporates narrative experience and analytic mode, can be seen as a text that re-enacts the ‘performance’ of boxing and art-making in which the traditional opposition between the two is integrated, if not suspended. (shrink)

The Second Khordad Movement was a democratic social movement in contemporary Iran. Investigation of this movement revealed two images, of flourish and of decline, as the movement was first generally successful until early 2000 and thereafter began to regress from the spring of that year onwards. The purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive framework in which to examine the reasons behind the movement's failure and regression. To this end, the study utilizes the literature on social movements, especially (...) the political process model, and attempts to explain the initial success and subsequent decline of the movement based on elements such as political opportunity, framing processes, mobilizing structures, and the repertoire of collective action.Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

I focus on an overlooked aspect of the challenge of irrelevant influences. The challenge is often framed in terms of whether recognizing the presence of irrelevant factors in the pedigree of a belief provides a defeater. I argue that the epistemic significance of irrelevant factors goes beyond their status as defeaters. I focus on what I call gray cases, where learning about such factors causes epistemic worry without justifying giving up the belief. I argue that in gray cases, the subject (...) finds a commendatory epistemic practical reason to engage in an activity intended to assuage that epistemic worry. (shrink)

Women entrepreneurs innovate, initiate, engage, and run business enterprises to contribute the domestic development. Women entrepreneurs think and start taking risks of operating enterprises and combine various factors involved in production to deal with the uncertain business environment. Entrepreneurship and technological innovation play a crucial role in developing the economy by creating job opportunities, improving skills, and executing new ideas. It has a significant impact on the income of the household. The study focused on investigating the role of women’s entrepreneurship (...) and innovation technologies in contributing to household income in the challenging situation of the pandemic COVID-19. The paper emphasized identifying the determinants of female entrepreneurial contribution toward household income. This study collected data from selected rural and urban areas of district Faisalabad through a self-administered questionnaire. Investigators interviewed female entrepreneurs and chose them through the snowball sampling technique from a population of purposively selected female-run businesses. Interviews were conducted with women entrepreneurs to gather relevant information for the survey investigation at their workplaces and home. The effects of various factors, including age, education, family size, income from other sources, time allocated to entrepreneurial activity, firm size, and location were estimated empirically using an ordered logit model. The study findings exhibited a positive and significant role of respondents’ education, family size, time allocated to entrepreneurial activities, and firm size. The survey outcomes also indicated that the contribution of entrepreneurial income to household income in the rural areas is significantly higher than that in urban areas. This study signifies that regulations against gender discrimination in public and private institutions are helpful. Besides, encouraging an environment for entrepreneurial culture among women in the country would increase family income. The study’s findings and policy implications directly link to Sustainable Development Goal 5 of Gender Equality and SDG 8 related to decent work and economic growth. (shrink)

This paper examines whether low income is a barrier to contraceptive use in Pakistan, a country in which economic conditions are deteriorating at a time when the private sector is becoming a more important supplier of contraception. Multivariate regression analysis performed using the Pakistan Contraceptive Demand Survey suggests that low income is a deterrent to modern contraceptive use in Pakistan. This is particularly the case for contraceptive methods supplied through the private sector. It is concluded that, if the aim of (...) family planning programmes is to reach low[hyphen]income people, the prices of contraceptives supplied through the private sector should be kept as low as possible. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;Two elements in Kripke's notion of "rigid designation" are distinguished: "genuine reference", which has to do with the semantic function of a singular term, and "rigid designation", which has to do with the behaviour of a singular term in modal contexts. Accordingly, the discussion is divided into two parts. ;In Part I, arguments from functionalism against "genuine reference" are considered and rejected, but it is claimed that certain Cartesian (...) arguments constitute a formidable objection against this notion. Therefore, while descriptivism must be rejected "genuine reference" is too strong as an alternative. "Weak reference" is suggested as the required notion, and some of its characteristics are delineated. ;In Part II, the problems concerning the contingent a priori and the necessary a posteriori arising from the second element in Kripke's notion are discussed, depending on whether the names involved are ordinary proper names, or "descriptive" names. Evans' arguments concerning descriptive names are considered, and it is argued that, because of a new distinction between deep vs. superficial rigidity, Davies and Humberstone fail in formulating them more exactly; but the informal arguments, though inconclusive, are intuitive. As for ordinary proper names, and on the basis of conclusions reached in Part I, the case for contingent a priori truths involving such names is undermined. In the case of necessary a posteriori truths involving ordinary proper names, the strategies of denying the necessity or the a posteriority of the examples are discussed, and found wanting. However, since there are reasons from other areas for denying the coincidence of the necessary and the a priori, Kripke's examples do not call for a radical departure from currently held views. (shrink)