The purpose of this study was to measure the prevalence of use of driver monitoring systems among U.S. adults, and factors influencing their adoption. One in five U.S. adults has used driver monitoring, primarily to obtain a discount on insurance. Safety benefits and financial incentives are likely to influence adoption.

This book offers for the first time a complete scholarly translation, commentary, and glossary in a modern European language of the logic section of Avicenna's very important compendium al-Naj=at.

The unified framework for addiction (UFA) formulated by Redish et al. is a tour de force. It uniquely predicts that there should be multiple addiction syndromes and pathways – a diversity that would reflect the complexity of the mammalian brain decision system. Here I explore some of the evolutionary and developmental ramifications of UFA and derive several new avenues for research.

Abstract: Background: In spite of the fact that computers continue to improve in speed and functions operation, they remain complex to use. Problems frequently happen, and it is hard to resolve or find solutions for them. This paper outlines the significance and feasibility of building a desktop PC problems diagnosis system. The system gathers problem symptoms from users’ desktops, rather than the user describes his/her problems to primary search engines. It automatically searches global databases of problem symptoms and solutions, and (...) also allows ordinary users to contribute exact problem reports in a structured manner. Objectives: The main goal of this Knowledge Based System is to get the suitable problem desktop PC symptoms and the correct way to solve the errors. Methods: In this paper the design of the proposed Knowledge Based System which was produced to help users of desktop PC in knowing many of the problems and error such as : Power supply problems, CPU errors, RAM dumping error, hard disk errors and bad sectors and suddenly restarting PC. The proposed Knowledge Based System presents an overview about desktop PC hardware errors are given, the cause of fault are outlined and the solution to the problems whenever possible is given out. CLIPS Knowledge Based System language was used for designing and implementing the proposed expert system. Results: The proposed PC desktop troubleshooting Knowledge Based System was evaluated by IT students and they were satisfied with its performance. (shrink)

You should rather play hide-and-seek against someone who cannot predict where you hide than against someone who can, as the article illustrates in connection with a high-stakes example. Causal Decision Theory denies this. So Causal Decision Theory is false.

"The Uncertain Science" argues that sociology has not freed itself from the influence of philosophy, and specifically from the search for certainty. This "foundationalism" which is characteristic of Western thought has influenced both the method adopted by sociologists, and their research practices. The authors criticize sociology for its formalism, arguing that this blunts the radicalism of its project. To regain the radical and critical edge implicit in sociology, it is necessary to adopt a comparative and historical approach which interprets social (...) science as part of societal learning. In the first part of the book the authors trace formalism to central positions in Western philosophy and examine its impact on historiography, evolutionary social thought and positivist sociology. In the second part they examine the tensions between formalism and social theory in the work of Levi Strauss and Habermas. In part three they compare modernization theory to more recent descussions of "modernity" and "postmodernity", and show the elements of continuity between these apparently contrary positions. This book should be of interest to undergraduates in sociology and philosophy. (shrink)

Opponents of Causal Decision Theory (CDT) sometimes claim (i) that it gives the wrong advice in Egan-style cases, where the CDT-endorsed act brings news that it causes a bad outcome; (ii) that CDT gives the right advice in Newcomb cases, where it is known in advance that the CDT-act causes you to be richer than the alternative. This paper argues that (i) and (ii) cannot both be true if rational preference over acts is transitive.

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)

_The Promise of Happiness_ is a provocative cultural critique of the imperative to be happy. It asks what follows when we make our desires and even our own happiness conditional on the happiness of others: “I just want you to be happy”; “I’m happy if you’re happy.” Combining philosophy and feminist cultural studies, Sara Ahmed reveals the affective and moral work performed by the “happiness duty,” the expectation that we will be made happy by taking part in that which (...) is deemed good, and that by being happy ourselves, we will make others happy. Ahmed maintains that happiness is a promise that directs us toward certain life choices and away from others. Happiness is promised to those willing to live their lives in the right way. Ahmed draws on the intellectual history of happiness, from classical accounts of ethics as the good life, through seventeenth-century writings on affect and the passions, eighteenth-century debates on virtue and education, and nineteenth-century utilitarianism. She engages with feminist, antiracist, and queer critics who have shown how happiness is used to justify social oppression, and how challenging oppression causes unhappiness. Reading novels and films including_ Mrs. Dalloway_, _The Well of Loneliness_, _Bend It Like Beckham_, and _Children of Men_, Ahmed considers the plight of the figures who challenge and are challenged by the attribution of happiness to particular objects or social ideals: the feminist killjoy, the unhappy queer, the angry black woman, and the melancholic migrant. Through her readings she raises critical questions about the moral order imposed by the injunction to be happy. (shrink)

We revisit the flight-to-quality and flight-from-quality occurrences vis-à-vis the stock-bond nexus across differing investment time scales in the COVID-19 era, using a novel technique hinged on a denoised frequency-domain transfer entropy. Our findings divulge that flights, both FTQ and FFQ, could be attained during stress periods. Generally, in the intermediate term of the COVID-19 pandemic, both Islamic and conventional bonds could act as safe havens, diversifiers, and hedges for international equities, and the same could be observed for international equities. We (...) reiterate empirically that flights may improve the financial system’s stability and robustness by allowing diversity to be effective when it is most required. The findings have financial and portfolio implications for investors considering how to deploy their investments in the COVID-19 era. Our findings may impact policymakers’ responses to changes in various asset classes, allowing them to better monitor financial markets and adjust macroeconomic policies. (shrink)

Muslim women and Muslim members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community face a specific form of dual subordination in relation to their gender and sexuality. A Muslim woman might seek solace from India's patriarchal religious judicial structures only to find that the secular system's patriarchal structures likewise aid in their subordination and create a space for new forms of such subordination. Similarly, a marginalized LGBT Muslim might attempt to reject an oppressive religious formulation only to come to (...) find that the secular Indian state might criminalize a particular form of sexuality. This analysis explores how Indian laws "give meaning" to sexuality through the legal structures manifested by state and religious regulatory bodies and argues that both religious and state legal institutions need to be reformed to create a legal environment that furthers rather than inhibits a full realization of sexual rights. (shrink)

Shifting laws and regulations increasingly displace the centrality of women's health concerns in the provision of abortion services. This is exemplified by the growing presence of deceptive Crisis Pregnancy Centers alongside new informed consent laws designed to dissuade women from seeking abortions. Litigation on informed consent is further complicated in the clinical context due to the increased mobilization of facts – such as the gestational age or sonogram of the fetus – delivered with the intent to dissuade women from accessing (...) abortion. In other words, factual information utilized for ideological purpose. To preserve a woman's autonomy and decision-making capacity, there must be a concerted effort on the part of legislators and courts to place a woman's health at the center of abortion law and policy. (shrink)

Islamic legal historiography has dealt extensively with questions of continuity and change, as epitomized by the relationship between ijtihād and taqlīd. This paper offers a new conceptualization of the ijtihād–taqlīd modes of law-making in the Sunni legal tradition. I argue that the institutional transformation from ijtihād to taqlīd required that jurists transform the views of the founding authorities of the schools over the course of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries. They achieved this by stratifying legal knowledge in their typologies of (...) muftis and judges in ways that had not been envisioned earlier, justifying their typologies by invoking tropes of decline and the extinction of mujtahids. This longue-durée view will shed light on the institutional significance of the taqlīdification of Islamic law, where legal security and stability were privileged over judicial discretion. (shrink)

Have you ever noticed that in watch advertisements the time is usually set at 10:10? The reasons and psychological effects of this default time setting are elusive. In Experiment 1, we hypothesized that watches showing a time setting resembling a smiling face (10:10) would enhance emotional valence and intention to buy compared to a neutral time setting (11:30), whereas a time setting resembling a sad face (8:20) would have the opposite effect. Moreover, we investigated a possible interaction effect with the (...) gender of the participants. In Experiment 2, we directly tested the hypotheses that watches set at 10:10 resemble a smiling face, whereas watches set at 8:20 resemble a sad face. The data of the first experiment reveal that watches set at 10:10 showed a significant positive effect on the emotion of the observer and the intention to buy. However, watches set at 8:20 did not show any effect on the emotion or the intention to buy. Moreover, watches set at 10:10 induced in women significantly stronger ratings of pleasure than in men. The data of the second experiment show that participants consistently perceive high resemblance between watches set at 10:10 and a smiling face as well as high resemblance between watches set at 8:20 and a sad face. This study provides for the first time empirical evidence for the notion that using watches with a time setting resembling a smiling face (like 10:10) can positively affect the emotional response of the observers and their evaluation of a seen watch, even though they are not aware of the fact that the shown time setting is inducing this effect. Practical implications of the observed findings and alternative explanations are discussed. (shrink)

Fix 2 < n < ω. Let CA n denote the class of cylindric algebras of dimension n, and let RCA n denote the variety of representable CA n ’s. Let L n denote first-order logic restricted to the first n variables. Roughly, CA n, an instance of Boolean algebras with operators, is the algebraic counterpart of the syntax of L n, namely, its proof theory, while RCA n algebraically and geometrically represents the Tarskian semantics of L n. Unlike Boolean (...) algebras having a Stone representation theorem, RCA n ⊊ CA n. Using combinatorial game theory, we show that the existence of certain finite relation algebras RA, which are algebras whose domain consists of binary relations, implies that the celebrated Henkin omitting types theorem fails in a very strong sense for L n. Using special cases of such finite RA ’s, we recover the classical nonfinite axiomatizability results of Monk, Maddux, and Biro on RCA n and we re-prove Hirsch and Hodkinson’s result that the class of completely representable CA n ’s is not first-order definable. We show that if T is an L n countable theory that admits elimination of quantifiers, λ is a cardinal < 2 ℵ 0, and F = 〈 Γ i : i < λ 〉 is a family of complete nonprincipal types, then F can be omitted in an ordinary countable model of T. (shrink)

We formulate several statements in Algebraic Logic that turn out to be independent of ZFC. We relate such statements to Martin's axiom, omitting types for variants of first order logic and topological properties of Baire spaces.

Le cri que porte l'intitulé de cet ouvrage est un appel aux lecteurs et aux historiens du Rushdisme à une halte réflexive sur ce que l'auteur appelle cri. Car le cri est une revendication légitime du philosophe. C'est une sorte de voix extra temporelle qui, par fidélité à l'esprit de sa philosophie, s'insurge et déclare que sa pensée a été trahie. Qui est donc ce philosophe à qui on a prêté tant de légendes et commis à son égard tant d'erreurs? (...) Est-ce un grand philosophe réduit au statut de simple commentateur? Ou est-ce une grande méprise à l'égard d'un penseur dont le seul tort est d'avoir voulu sauver le rationalisme philosophique? C'est avec force et détermination que l'auteur de cet essai nous démontre ses convictions sur un personnage historique essentiel, manifestement trop méconnu... Ahmed Mellah est professeur de philosophie. Il a pour ambition de soumettre la philosophie islamique à une analyse critique qui la débarrasserait du dogmatisme institué et autres a priori qui la gangrènent et rendent toute lecture audacieuse totalement inopérante. (shrink)

This paper argues that evidential decision theory is incompatible with options having objective values. If options have objective values, then it should always be rationally permissible for an agent to choose an option if they are certain that the option uniquely maximizes objective value. But, as we show, if options have objective values and evidential decision theory is true, then it is not always rationally permissible for an agent to choose an option if they are certain that the option uniquely (...) maximizes objective value. (shrink)

The market relationships are being contested. This can be seen in the increasing number of alternative social experiments in the ‘North’ and the ‘South’ which propose to think out the present market relationships in a different way, in particular in establishing exchange value and in facilitating access to trade. These practical alternatives are supported by trends in academic circles that over the past three decades have opposed neoliberal capitalism and individualism in today's commercialised society. Calling for greater solidarity and social (...) justice in economic relationships, in particular, partisans of social and solidarity economics, identifying with these trends, demand new forms of exchange. The objective of this article is to re-examine these demands. What exactly do the SSE mean by ‘solidarity’ and ‘solidarity-based economy'? We would like to trace the contours of this theoretical and political project and to assess the practicability of the proposed alternative to neoliberal capitalism. (shrink)

Palimpsests of Themselves is an intervention in current discussions about the fate of philosophy in postclassical Islamic intellectual history. It takes up the most advanced logic textbook of Muslim South Asia, The Ladder of the Sciences, as a case study and engages its legacy in three ways. In addition to presenting the first full translation and extended commentary in English, Asad Q. Ahmed offers detailed assessments of the technical contributions of the work, explores the social and institutional settings of (...) the vast commentarial response it elicited, and develops a theory of the philosophical commentary that is internal to the tradition. The technical, social, and theoretical approaches to the commentarial text complicate presuppositions upon which questions of Islam's intellectual decline are erected. As such, Ahmed offers a unique and powerful opportunity to understand the transmission of knowledge across the Islamic world. (shrink)

The present research applies Michel Foucault's perspectives on discipline and punishment to Steve Hamilton's novel The Lock Artist, exploring the criminal subjectivity of the protagonist beyond the binary of good and evil. Through textual analysis, the study examines the norms, upbringing, and circumstances that shape the protagonist's identity as a deviant and criminal. The research also investigates the role of confession as a tool of the modern state in altering the subjectivity of its subjects. The findings suggest that deviance and (...) illegality are social constructs, created and maintained by power structures. The study highlights how society defines deviance and the state defines illegality, leading individuals down a path of criminalization. This research provides insight into the ways power operates to shape an individual’s subjectivity, particularly in relation to criminality, and offers a critical analysis of the ways the modern state exercises control over its subjects. For useful explanation and analysis of criminal subjectivity, Michel Foucault’s book ‘discipline and punishment’ has been referred. This article discusses the norms, upbringing, and circumstances of the protagonist and tries to explore his subjectivity as a criminal beyond the paradigm of good and evil. It elaborates those factors which constitute his identity as a deviant and then as a criminal. Also, this research discusses the role of confession as a tool of the modern state to alter the subjectivity of its subject. (shrink)

Medieval Muslim scholars were challenged with squaring their conceptions of prophetic infallibility with reports that Muhammad disobeyed revelatory commands from God. The manner in which they rehabilitated the prophetic image in these cases had corresponding repercussions in the fields of jurisprudence, theology, and legal theory. The present article uses the case of Q. 8:67 to demonstrate the intertwined nature of the Islamic sciences and the stakes involved when delimiting the prophetic ability to err and/or disobey God.

We live today within a system in which state and corporate power aim to render space flat, transparent, and uniform, for only then can it be truly controlled. The gaze of power and the commodity form are capable of infiltrating even the darkest of corners, and often, we invite them into our most private spaces. We do so as a matter of convenience, but also to placate ourselves and cope with the alienation inherent in our everyday lives. The resulting dominant (...) space can best be termed totalitarian. It is space stripped of uniqueness, deprived of the “spatial aura” necessary for authentic experience. In Totalitarian Space and the Destruction of Aura, Saladdin Ahmed sets out to help us grasp what has been lost before no trace remains. He draws attention to that which we might prefer not to see, but despite the bleakness of this indictment of reality, the book also offers a message of hope. Namely, it is only once we comprehend the magnitude of the threat to our spatial experience and our own complicity in sustaining this system that we can begin to resist the totalizing forces at work. (shrink)

Ahmed uncovers new historiographical perspectives by critically examining the work of prominent intellectuals, such as Muhammad Abduh, Qasim Amin and Abdul A'la Maududi.

Cette monographie porte sur la question de la connaissance dans le commentaire coranique de Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī. Ahmed Oulddali y étudie, à travers plusieurs sources, les théories psychologiques et épistémologiques sur lesquelles cet exégète sunnite fonde son interprétation du Coran. This monograph addresses the question of knowledge in Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī's Qurʾān commentary. Utilizing a variety of sources, Ahmed Oulddali presents the psychological and epistemological theories on which this Sunni exegete bases his interpretation of the Qurʾān.

The primary and secondary sources of Islamic law often assume a binary distinction between ijtihād and taqlīd, ignoring a third level of engagement with the sources, which was conceptualized by some jurists as forming a distinct category. In this article I discuss the evolution of the terms ijtihād, taqlīd, and ittibāʿ, using a conceptual-historical approach. I argue that the use of taqlīd to mean “precedent-following” did not emerge as a technical term until after the time of al-Shāfiʿī. The distinction between (...) precedent-following and verifiable-following did not appear in legal discourse until the time of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal. I also demonstrate that there were three approaches to these terms in legal discourse after the time of Ibn Ḥanbal, with three groups of jurists defining them in ways that advanced their different visions of law-making. I conclude with a discussion of the debate over the meanings of these terms in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (shrink)

The issue of the employment of graduates in Algeria was born with the decoupling between training and employment in the state public sector. She became very acute in the late 80s with the transition to economic liberalism and is the subject of a new employment policy for at least twenty years. In this context, the reform of higher education introduced in 2004 under the name of “LMD reform” aims to “modernize” higher education and training to match the needs of employers. (...) This article specifically examines the devices to youth employment implemented by various government departments and the implementation of the “LMD”, especially in view of using it is supposed to provide young graduates to better be inserted in the labor market. (shrink)

The model of feminism as humanist in practice and postmodern in theory is inadequate. Feminist practice and theory directly inform each other to displace both humanist and postmodern conceptions of the subject. An examination of feminism's use of rights discourse suggests that feminist practice questions the humanist conception of the subject as a self-identity. Likewise, feminist theory undermines the postmodern emphasis on the constitutive instability and indeterminacy of the subject.

Published in 1953, Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations had a deeply unsettling effect upon our most basic philosophical ideas concerning thought, sensation and language. Its claim that philosophical questions of meaning necessitate a close analysis of the way we use language continues to influence Anglo-American philosophy today. However, its compressed and dialogic prose is not always easy to follow. This collection of essays deepens but also challenges our understanding of the work's major themes, such as the connection between meaning and use, the (...) nature of concepts, thought and intentionality, and language games. Bringing together leading philosophers and Wittgenstein scholars, it offers a genuinely critical approach and demonstrating Wittgenstein's relevance for contemporary philosophy. This volume will appeal to readers interested in the later Wittgenstein, in addition to those interested in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology. (shrink)

This study investigates the association of a broad set of variables with the ethical decision making of management accountants in Libya. Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire including four different ethical scenarios was used to gather data from 229 participants. For each scenario, ethical decision making was examined in terms of the recognition, judgment and intention stages of Rest’s model. A significant relationship was found between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but ethical (...) recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention—thus providing support for Rest’s model. Organizational variables, age and educational level yielded few significant results. The lack of significance for codes of ethics might reflect their relative lack of development in Libya, in which case Libyan companies should pay attention to their content and how they are supported, especially in the light of the under-development of the accounting profession in Libya. Few significant results were also found for gender, but where they were found, males showed more ethical characteristics than females. This unusual result reinforces the dangers of gender stereotyping in business. Personal moral philosophy and moral intensity dimensions were generally found to be significant predictors of the three stages of ethical decision making studied. One implication of this is to give more attention to ethics in accounting education, making the connections between accounting practice and Islam. Overall, this study not only adds to the available empirical evidence on factors affecting ethical decision making, notably examining three stages of Rest’s model, but also offers rare insights into the ethical views of practising management accountants and provides a benchmark for future studies of ethical decision making in Muslim majority countries and other parts of the developing world. (shrink)

Dear Readers,Happy Summer Holidays for all of us up in the Northern Hemisphere. While we are basking in the warmth of sunny days our friends in Australia are buying winter clothes. How strange is this world! And stranger are the creations who are supposed to look after all other organic and inorganic objects in this planet and maybe beyond. The simple virtues of ethical and value based behavior is often forgotten when we are focus on getting the best for ourselves (...) without thinking or respecting the rights of others. The case of ethics in publication is not any different. We have few papers this issue but they are of extreme value and relevance. (shrink)