Modern optimisation is increasingly relying on meta-heuristic methods. This study presents a new meta-heuristic optimisation algorithm called Eurasian oystercatcher optimiser (EOO). The EOO algorithm mimics food behaviour of Eurasian oystercatcher (EO) in searching for mussels. In EOO, each bird (solution) in the population acts as a search agent. The EO changes the candidate mussel according to the best solutions to finally eat the best mussel (optimal result). A balance must be achieved among the size, calories, and energy of mussels. The (...) proposed algorithm is benchmarked on 58 test functions of three phases (unimodal, multimodal, and fixed-diminution multimodal) and compared with several important algorithms as follows: particle swarm optimiser, grey wolf optimiser, biogeography based optimisation, gravitational search algorithm, and artificial bee colony. Finally, the results of the test functions prove that the proposed algorithm is able to provide very competitive results in terms of improved exploration and exploitation balances and local optima avoidance. (shrink)

Advance directives are specific competent consumers’ wishes about future medical plans in the event that they become incompetent. Awareness of a patient’s autonomy particularly, in relation to their right to refuse or withdraw treatment, a right for the patient to die from natural causes and interest in end of life issues were among the main reasons for developing and legalizing advance medical directives in developed countries. However, in many circumstances cultural and religious aspects are among many factors that can hamper (...) implementation of advance directives. Islam and Muslims in general have a good understanding of death and dying. Islam allows the withholding or withdrawal of treatments in some cases where the intervention is considered futile. However, there is lack of literature and debate about such issues from an Islamic point of view. This article provides the Islamic perspective with regards to advance medical directive with the hope that it will generate more thoughts and evoke further discussion on this important topic. (shrink)

This article proposes an analysis of changes implemented during Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's administration (20032003), which displayed bias against changes and introduced schemes to justify the systems it upheld. Transmutations wrought during Abdullah's tenure may have been neither substantial nor totalizing, but within the conservative paradigm which had long gripped national politics, Abdullah's deviations were significant nevertheless.

The aim of present paper is to introduce the concept of ‘expressive perception’ in Ernst Cassirer’s philosophical mythology. Having Cited Dorothy Emmet’s methodological objection, the author, by recalling Kantian aspect of Cassirer’s thought and referring to the concept of ‘expressive perception’, would make an attempt to reply on his part: according to Cassirer, this level of perceptive experience is the origin of the mythical form of thinking as a whole and, at the same time, is the original and irreducible altogether. (...) Thus, taking ‘mythical thought’ as an independent form of thinking, beside the ‘critical-empirical’ form of thinking, is, for one thing, completely cogent; for another, due to its dependency upon expressive form of perception, mythical thought would never be quite omitted, rather, keep living latently beneath the skin of mental life. In addition, author explains how much Cassirer owes, regarding to the concept of ‘expressive form of perception’, to Max Scheler. Avoiding to elaborate on Scheler’s detailed argument, Cassirer relies strongly on the consequences Scheler draws from his considerations in his work ‘Wesen und Formen der Sympathie’. Restating Scheler’s argument briefly should help in understanding Cassirer’s idea. (shrink)

On what I call absolutist essentialism about modality (AE), the metaphysical necessities are the propositions that are true in virtue of the essence (i.e. Aristotelian, absolute essence) of some entities. Other kinds of necessity can then be defined by restriction – e.g. the conceptual necessities are the propositions that are true in virtue of the essence of conceptual entities specifically. As an account of metaphysical modality and some other kinds (e.g. logical, conceptual), AE may have important virtues. However, when it (...) comes to accounting for further important kinds, like natural or normative necessity, it faces a challenge. Three main options have been defended: treat those kinds as further restricted forms of metaphysical necessity; define them as conditional forms of metaphysical necessity; treat them as primitive kinds. -/- In this paper, I propose a new option, which combines the main idea of AE (reducing necessities to essences) with an idea which has been developed largely independently: that of relative essence. On the proposed view, those kinds (e.g. natural necessity) that cannot be grounded in the essences (i.e. absolute essences) of the relevant entities (e.g. natural entities) may be grounded in their relative essences instead. Thus, I propose a generalized, or extended, version of AE, which I call relativized essentialism about modality (RE). In particular, RE offers prospects for a general framework for kinds of modality which is flexible enough to cover a large range of kinds (both absolute and relative ones) while remaining parsimonious and unified. (shrink)

This study provides a detailed description of ways in which Muslim astronomers handled the Greek astronomical legacy, reassessed its cultural and philosophical implications in light of their religiously-inspired world view, and proposed to modify it.

Religionen sind ästhetisch vermittelt. Nicht nur die religiöse Praxis, sondern der religiöse Habitus überhaupt vollzieht sich in ästhetischen Akten. In diesem Band wird dem komplexen Feld der ästhetischen Inszenierung des Religiösen multidisziplinär Rechnung getragen, und zwar mit besonderem Augenmerk auf filmisch-serielle Narration.

Explanation and Value in the Arts offers penetrating studies by art historians, literary theorists and philosophers, of issues central to explaining works of literature and painting. The first chapters look at the sources of interest in the fine arts and point to the intimate relation between aesthetic and other values. The following contributions develop the interaction between value and explanation by examining the construction of value in the study of the arts, including considerations of the nature of creativity and the (...) principles for the explanations of works. A final section takes up questions of the role of ideology and the determining role of power. (shrink)

Whether a collection of scientific data can be explained only by a unique theory or whether such data can be equally explained by multiple theories is one of the more contested issues in the history and philosophy of science. This paper argues that the case for multiple explanations is strengthened by the widespread failure of models in mathematical logic to be unique, i.e., categorical. Science is taken to require replicable and explicit public knowledge; this necessitates an unambiguous language for its (...) transmission. Mathematics has been chosen as the vehicle to transmit scientific knowledge, both because of its “unreasonable effectiveness” and because of its unambiguous nature, hence the vogue of axiomatic systems. But mathematical logic tells us that axiomatic systems need not refer to uniquely defined real structures. Hence what is accepted as science may be only one of several possibilities. (shrink)

Academic integrity is a vital pedagogical responsibility that educational institutions should explicitly address. One of the best ways to uphold academic integrity is to create a culture of academic integrity throughout the school. This is especially imperative at high schools where students develop their moral identity because students who act dishonestly at high school will likely behave accordingly in post-secondary education and ultimately be dishonest in familial and professional settings. Creating a culture of academic integrity is a challenging, long and (...) multifaceted journey. In this respect, this exploratory case study set out to create a culture of academic integrity at a high school in Türkiye and explore what facilitates and impedes the process. We followed Stephens’ (2016) Multilevel Intervention Model and implemented a School-Wide Education program to guide us through the process. We conducted various activities throughout one academic year, from seminars to competitions. At the end of the term, we conducted individual and focus group interviews with the members of the school community and analyzed the interview data to identify facilitators and barriers of the process. The analysis yielded five facilitators (1) creating buy-in, (2) administrative embracement and support, (3) activities that promote student involvement, (4) external expert and school collaboration as praxis, and (5) policy as the blueprint and five barriers (1) deficiencies in responding academic misconduct, (2) prioritization of academic success over academic integrity, (3) teacher resistance against change, (4) exam-based assessment design, and (5) timing of the activities. Each theme was discussed in detail, and recommendations were made for high schools which set out on a journey of creating academic integrity culture. (shrink)

This volume offers interreligious and interdisciplinary insight into the cinematic-serial and literary narration of evil. Evil is an important motif in literature, film and series. We encounter it in the most diverse forms - be it the Joker from The Dark Knight, Goethe's Mephisto or in the Shiite theatre ritual of the Taʿziya. This volume attempts a closer exploration of what we know as evil, and yet find difficult to comprehend. In addition to Christian and Islamic perspectives, philosophical and mystical (...) considerations are also addressed. Evil, its aesthetic reception and the resulting perspectives on its reality are the focus of the multidisciplinary contributions. With contributions by Prof. Dr. Thomas Jürgasch, Prof. Dr. Ahmad Milad Karimi, Prof. Dr. Walter Lesch, Prof. Dr. Konrad Paul Liessmann, Dr. Maryam Palizban, Iyad Shraim and Prof. Dr. Reinhold Zwick. (shrink)

During the COVID-19 epidemic, personal safety has received increasing attention, leading to behavioral changes. Mobile-wallet makes it easier for people to keep social distance, which helps stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Evolving Internet technology has brought about changes in consumer lifestyle. The current situation of COVID-19 has created a business environment to shift from traditional ways and adopt e-commerce solutions worldwide. Grounded in technology acceptance model theory, this study’s objective is two-fold: First, this study intends to examine perceived (...) susceptibility to COVID-19, perceived severity of COVID-19, insecurity and discomfort as the predictors of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. Second, the current research intends to test the moderating effect of electronic words-of-mouth on the relationship between attitude and usage intention. Using survey methods, 226 usable responses were collected through a mall intercept survey in Pakistan. Data were analyzed using partial least square. The results revealed that PEOU and PU positively influence attitude toward M-wallet. This study has found that attitude positively influences the usage intention in adopting M-wallet. The results also support the moderating role of eWOM. These findings contribute to the marketing literature in several ways, particularly in Pakistan. This is the first study to use eWOM as a moderating variable in the TAM theory. In addition, this study adds to the current body of knowledge by considering eWOM as a multi-dimensional construct novel in m-wallet literature. (shrink)

In his book The Intellectual Virtues and the Life of the Mind: On the Place of the Virtues in Contemporary Epistemology, Jonathan Kvanvig argues that there is an interchangeability of personal and doxastic justification, which ‘blocks the quick route to virtue epistemology’. To prove that personal justification is reducible to doxastic justification, he utilizes λ-calculus expressions that aim to show the logical equivalence of the two notions of justification. In this paper, I argue that he has made an illegitimate move (...) in his translation of the ordinary talk of personal justification into λ-expressions because his translation involves both an elimination from and an addition to the ordinary language. Pace Kvanvig, there is no logical equivalence of personal to doxastic justification. So, his argument for the reducibility of personal to doxastic justification founders. More importantly, since he has failed to disprove that personal justification is irreducibly primitive, he hasn’t shown that the prospects for virtue epistemology are ‘hopeless’. (shrink)

This research focuses on the contributions of a non-Arab scholar who has significantly impacted the study of the language of the Qur'an, the most revered and miraculous of texts. Despite its eternal wonders and the mysteries of its miraculous nature remaining untapped, the language of the Qur'an continues to be a subject of intense study. After reviewing the works of al-Farahi, I was impressed by the boldness of this non-Arab scholar in critiquing many established theories of Arabic lexicographers, morphologists, and (...) grammarians from both earlier and later periods. His responses in linguistic matters, particularly in grammatical issues, will be the main focus of this research. The research will examine his responses in grammatical issues, which we have categorized into two sections: responses related to nouns and responses related to prepositions. The section on nouns is further divided into two main categories: responses concerning inflected nouns and responses concerning constructed nouns. This classification follows the approach of al-Zamakhshari in his book Al-Mufassal, and is organized as follows. (shrink)

Multiple sequence alignment is one of the major problems that can be encountered in the bioinformatics field. MSA consists in aligning a set of biological sequences to extract the similarities between them. Unfortunately, this problem has been shown to be NP-hard. In this article, a new algorithm was proposed to deal with this problem; it is based on a quantum-inspired cuckoo search algorithm. The other feature of the proposed approach is the use of a randomized progressive alignment method based on (...) a hybrid global/local pairwise algorithm to construct the initial population. The results obtained by this hybridization are very encouraging and show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed solution. (shrink)

It has long been hypothesized that pretend play is beneficial to social and cognitive development. However, there is little evidence regarding the neural regions that are active while children engage in pretend play. We examined activation of prefrontal and posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) regions using near-infrared spectroscopy while 42 four- to eight-year-old children freely played with dolls or tablet games with a social partner or by themselves. Social play activated right prefrontal regions more than solo play. Children engaged the (...) pSTS during solo doll play but not during solo tablet play, suggesting they were rehearsing social cognitive skills more with dolls. These findings suggest social play utilizes multiple neural regions and highlight how doll play can achieve similar patterns of activation, even when children play by themselves. Doll play may provide a unique opportunity for children to practice social interactions important for developing social emotional skills, such as empathy. (shrink)

The concept of Orientalism has been widely dealt with in the humanities and social sciences. It helps explain a peculiar construction of the Arab-Muslim world. Orientalism has operated in various historical paradigms but has always emphasised specific Western constructions of the Orient. Nowadays, the concept has metamorphosed to refer to new constructions of the Orient. New representations of Islam and the Muslim world are dominating the Western public space. The aim of this paper is twofold. It explores the historical development (...) and paradigmatic shifts that have affected the concept of Orientalism. It then suggests that a neo-Orientalism has recently emerged, is less territorialised and operating within a new paradigm. It holds a new ideologically motivated agenda, constructs new objects, and feeds the social phenomenon called Islamophobia. (shrink)

This paper interprets John von Neumann's views on the proper role of mathematics in science, with attention to its implications for economics. The evolution of von Neumann's thought over his lifespan, an examination of which is greatly aided by some self-conscious appraisals of von Neumann himself, suggests that von Neumann ended by taking a very pragmatic approach to the use of mathematics. One can almost characterize it as an engineering approach to the philosophy of mathematics since von Neumann takes mathematics (...) to be justified by its applications. This approach, which is surprisingly non-technical and hence accessible to general readers, is then placed in the context of his wider world-view. (shrink)

A common feature of all standard theories of the laws of nature is that they are "absolutist": They take laws to be either all metaphysically necessary or all contingent. Science, however, gives us reason to think that there are laws of both kinds, suggesting that standard theories should make way for "non-absolutist" alternatives: theories which accommodate laws of both modal statuses. In this paper, we set out three explanatory challenges for any candidate non-absolutist theory and discuss the prospects of the (...) two extant candidates in light of these challenges. We then develop our own non-absolutist theory, the essentialist DTA account, which combines the nomic-necessitation or DTA account with an essentialist approach to metaphysical modality in order to meet the three explanatory challenges. Finally, we argue that the distinction between kinematical and dynamical laws found in physical theories supports both non-absolutism in general and our proposed essentialist DTA view in particular. (shrink)

This book brings together a distinguished group of scholars from music, drama, poetry, performance art, religion, classics and philosophy to investigate the complex and developing interaction between performance and authenticity in the arts. The volume begins with a perspective on traditional understandings of that relation, examining the crucial role of performance in the Poetics, the marriage of art with religion, the experiences of religious and aesthetic authenticity, and modernist conceptions of authenticity. Several essays then consider music as a performative art. (...) The final essays discuss the link of authenticity to sincerity and truth in poetry, explain how performance, as an authentic feature of poetry, embodies a collective effort, and culminate in a discussion of the dark side of performance - its constant susceptibility to inauthenticity. Together the essays suggest how issues of performance and authenticity enter into consideration of a wide range of the arts. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Tuomas Tahko has argued for a hybrid view of the laws of nature, according to which some physical laws are metaphysically necessary, while others are metaphysically contingent. In this paper, we show that his criterion for distinguishing between these two kinds of laws — which crucially relies on the essences of natural kinds — is on its own unsatisfactory. We then propose an alternative way of drawing the metaphysically necessary/contingent distinction for laws of physics based on (...) the central kinematical/dynamical distinction used in physical theorising, and argue that the criterion can be used to amend Tahko’s own account, but also that it can be combined with different metaphysical views about the source of necessity. (shrink)

Creation, collection and retention of knowledge in digital communities is an activity that currently requires being explicitly targeted as a secure method of keeping intellectual capital growing in the digital era. In particular, we consider it relevant to analyze and evaluate the empathetic cognitive personalities and behaviors that individuals now have with the change from face-to-face communication to computer-mediated communication online. This document proposes a cyber-humanistic approach to enhance the traditional SECI knowledge management model. A cognitive perception is added to (...) its cyclical process following design thinking interaction, exemplary for improvement of the method in which knowledge is continuously created, converted and shared. In building a cognitive-centered model, we specifically focus on the effective identification and response to cognitive stimulation of individuals, as they are the intellectual generators and multiplicators of knowledge in the online environment. Our target is to identify how geographically distributed—digital—organizations should align the individual’s cognitive abilities to promote iteration and improve interaction as a reliable stimulant of collective intelligence. The new model focuses on analyzing the four different stages of knowledge processing, where individuals with sympathetic cognitive personalities can significantly boost knowledge creation in a virtual social system. For organizations, this means that multidisciplinary individuals can maximize their extensive potential, by externalizing their knowledge in the correct stage of the knowledge creation process, and by collaborating with their appropriate sympathetically cognitive remote peers. (shrink)

The first volume in the series Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and the Arts offers a range of responses by distinguished philosophers and art historians to some crucial issues generated by the relationship between the art object and language in art history. Each of the chapters in this volume is a searching response to theoretical and practical questions in terms accessible to readers of all human science disciplines. The editors, one a philosopher and one an art historian, provide an introductory chapter (...) which outlines the themes of the volume and explicates the terms in which they are discussed. The contributors open new avenues of enquiry involving concepts of 'presence', 'projective properties', visual conventions and syntax, and the appropriateness of figurative language in accounting for visual art. The issues they discuss will challenge the boundaries to thought that some contemporary theorising sustains. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.